#and I still gotta make my let me tell you about Homestuck presentation too!

[r0semultiverse]

I need to start jotting down my Homestuck Beyond Canon predictions and try to turn more of them into theory posts.

I like making these big elaborate theory posts, it’s fun (though it does take a lot out of me and takes a lot of time). If I had decent editing software I would probably save some of these ideas for YouTube videos. Hell, I still might turn some of these into Youtube videos! 👀

Depending on how fast for tech stuff, IRL stuff, and the pacing of Beyond Canon... if nothing else I can make a hits and misses video of what I got right and what I got wrong. Might be fun! Let me know if you’d like to see that or if you have other ideas y’all would like to see! 💜

[drake-the-incubus]

This is a gift for @striderhell from the Homestuck Secret Santa 2020 (@homestuckss). I was aiming for 3000 words but uh, Dirk as a muse didn’t want to continue exploring the concept of gender given his rigid but philosophical nature.

I hope this was good, and if not just gimme a shout and I’ll try and come up with something better. 

Word Count: 1521 Fandom: Homestuck Characters: Dirk Strider, Roxy Lalonde Relationships: Dirk Strider & Roxy Lalonde (Platonic/Friends)

Additional Notes: Roxy uses He/Him and They/Them, I’ve never finished the epilogues but I love NB Rox. Dirk uses no pronouns in this, as I wanted to try that out. 

Please enjoy Dirk exploring his gender. 

Sometimes in an effort to define ourselves, we feel trapped to conform to some rigid aspect or label in hopes to reach an understanding of who we are. At times this process can be frustrating and dissatisfying. Other people take weeks or days, and some of them take years or never figure it out. 

Perhaps gender, as a construct, can’t be fully understood, but we can understand ourselves as people without it. The tale before you, is only a short of someone who wishes to take a journey many end up doing, and most have never encountered.

Dirk was sitting in a cafe on Earth-C, sipping on a coffee in between tinkering with another pair of shades. The goal was updating and adding a better set of graphics, hoping to add some additional features to make things easier.

It had been a while since the Prince of Heart had seen the rest of the gods. Jake would visit once in a while, and they would have a friendly spar or talk. Roxy would message once in a while, letting Dirk know any spicy news about the rest.

Dave would randomly show up, they would stare each other down before both Striders would give a thumbs up and go their separate ways.

Rose would often come by, trading witty banter and wisdom. Both of them struggled with the massive impact of their god tiers and would often talk about it to one another.

Today though, Dirk decided a change of area would suit this project best, specifically needing to leave the workshop and enjoy some caffeine. Recently a problem developed that would continue to nag at the Prince even through the night. Lack of sleep was the reason why Dirk had picked a coffee shop. It made the most sense.

Gender did not.

Dirk had been going through a lot lately, and when Roxy had come out as trans, it had been taken pretty well by most of them. Not that it would be different if Dirk came out either, but rather that would take knowing what was going on.

This was a laughable moment, since they all had beaten the game, made it out and enjoyed their own little home in the midst of nothing. Creating entire worlds and civilizations with the help of their space and time players, but Dirk was sitting there, in a cafe, trying to figure out what gender even was and how it related to the god’s own identity.

Pronouns were hard, but so was even figuring this shit out. Making a copy of your brain at thirteen was much easier than figuring out if you’re cis or not, and Dirk didn’t know.

The more it was thought about, the more the thought cropped up, what if it turned out the being Cis wasn’t the result. Dirk was absolutely sure about not being a chick, nothing really appealed about that, but then again there was a very similar feeling over the current gender.

Man, agender or woman. Those were the categories that presented themselves currently. Working harder to connect the shades to the newly built chip, Dirk jolted when suddenly Roxy sat down across the table.

“I called out to you, but you didn’t answer.” He said leaning over and looking over the project. “I was wondering what made you change location, you’re pretty adamant to work in your workshop Dirkie.”

“I needed to think, which I was doing when you were calling out to me. Thinking so hard about creating a new line of orange pop with more caffeine than this cup of coffee that the world died out and I was left to only the one set of thoughts for once.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, and crossed his arms. “Really now? You think that I can’t tell something bigger is going on in that Strider head of yours? You’ve come up with projects while having a philosophical discussion with Rose and texting Dave a rap battle. You’re the king of multi-tasking, which also means your attention is usually divided more, and you’re attempting to put a wire on the wrong side of that.”

Dirk frowned and sighed, putting the project down. “Well, I can’t get nothing past you I suppose. I guess one thing that’s on my mind is how much I miss AR, since he was a good source of introspection, then again I have no idea if that would have helped in the first place.” Tapping fingers filled the space between them as the Prince looked outside at the billions of humans and trolls walking over the streets.

“I’ve been contemplating what gender is and how I relate to it since you came out as nonbinary. It’s been making me think about what is my gender, and I’ve come to the conclusion none of them really fit, but that’s also something to worry about since that means I don’t relate to any of the options-“

“Before you go on a long tangent, I want to ask, what are the options?” He interrupted Dirk while cocking his head.

“Agender, man and woman.” Dirk said bluntly, staring at Roxy. The laughter that resulted made the god tip the iconic shades down to stare at Roxy with deadpan orange eyes.

“I get greeted by your eye colour, score! But no, you got it all wrong, gender isn’t rigid categories, it’s a spectrum. You can’t define it by strict labels and there’s too many to count. So you don’t fit in three, there’s millions of genders. Some might not have a word for it right now. I’m nonbinary, but that’s because I’m not a man or a woman completely, I’m somewhere in the middle, closer to a man if I were to describe it as like, a sliding scale. So don’t be in a hurry, and don’t worry if you don’t figure it out.”

“I need to. Not knowing makes things difficult. I know it might be unhealthy to obsess over, but ever since I made Auto Responder, I had the need to understand myself fully and everything about myself.” With an elbow on the table, Dirk took a hand and raked it through the mess of hair. Having done so more than a hundred times earlier, the Prince was sure it was a complete and utter mess at this point, and would need to be taken care of at home.

“Well, I have a list of some of the other more known ones, maybe one of them check out for you?” He offered a tablet.

Dirk took it, and looked over the list of options and each description of it, mumbling under breath before placing the tablet back down with a definite, “I’m going to use Genderless for now and see what happens.” It looked interesting, the excerpt specifically outlined not having a gender at all due to neurodivergence, rather than lacking a gender or having no gender, different from agender. It didn’t feel much different from everything else, but nothing did. Having several of the entries be defined by one’s neurodivergence was weird, but the more thought placed into the concept, the more it felt real to Dirk. Rather it meant that the Prince would have to take Rose up on her offer to get a fully evaluation soon, even if both of them came to the conclusion Dirk was probably neurodivergent and that it wasn’t impactful with how the god had lived life before the game. 

“Are there any pronouns I should use for you?”

Pursing lips, Dirk gave a shake of the head. “None preferably. I think I need more time to actually think everything over. I have no positive or negative feelings for anything on there, and so I’m debating on if I’m everything or not. I can figure out how to make an exact replica of my own brain as a teenager, create robots, plot out the exact way I can kiss Jake and even save everyone's lives getting into the game. I’ve designed complex interactions to lead to the outcome I desire, and I can’t even pick a gender. This is quite frankly, ridiculous.”

“You don’t gotta. Dirk, it’s not about just picking a gender, it’s about figuring out a big part of yourself, and something most people don’t do for yours. You figured out you’re gay, now you’re figuring out what else you could be.” He placed a hand on Dirk’s and gave him a smile. “Whatever your result, I’m here for you. Even if you later think you’re a Cis man I’ll still be here for you. We might be siblings but we were friends first and that matters the most to me.”

Dirk gave a snort. “This is so fucking corny, but thanks Rox. I appreciate the love and support. Maybe I can treat you to another coffee since I feel like if I don’t buy one soon I’m going to be kicked out for making a mess of a window table.” Motioning towards the table, and standing up, the god stretched out. “What are you in the mood for?”

“Caramel Macchiato please.”

“Gotcha.”

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-08-23

More homestuuuuuck

I’m a little tired today so I don’t expect much intelligent analysis out of myself, but if anything classpecty happens I doubt I’ll be able to help myself regardless.

oh, always

(EDITS: added note on horn colors, link to ask on potential Blood powers reference)

> CHAPTER 12. Really Convoluted Metaphorical Horseshit

cuuute

In the bowels of a different ship, at a moment in time that is not pinpointable in either direction from the previous interaction, another Dave raps quietly to himself.

another dave raps quietly to himself.  i am glad that phrase exists it brings me joy

(LATER EDIT: A friend on Discord pointed out that throughout this entire update, Karkat's horns are #FF0000 red. They were normal candy-corn colors in previous glimpses at the ship crew, though they used a dark single-color shortcut typical of old Homestuck at one point... but THIS time it stays STARK red even when we zoom in close later. Is this just artistic liberty? Did Karkat color his horns for fashion? Does this happen to red-bloods like the Sufferer after a certain age? Just how much time has actually passed, here? We might have to wait for the commentary for this one.)

KARKAT: I WAS SAYING I THOUGHT WE MIGHT GO, I DUNNO, ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE ENTIRE SHIP WHILE THE CLOTHES WERE WASHING. KARKAT: SEEING AS THIS DECREPIT MACHINE WE WERE SO BLESSEDLY PROVIDED WITH MAKES A WHIRRING SOUND SO PANCHAFINGLY ARHYTHMIC THAT IT THREATENS TO ERADICATE THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF TEMPO FROM THE UNIVERSE.

Karkat really has chilled out hasnt he?  like this is surprisingly level for him, and that fact is hilarious.

KARKAT: AND YET SOMEHOW BASICALLY ALL THAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE WE STARTED THE LOAD IS THAT YOU’VE BEEN USING IT AS A FUCKED UP BEAT TO WHISPER TO YOURSELF ABOUT FLOWERS TO.

oh gosh that’s why he’s rapping

> ==>

DAVE: kanaya was telling me this kids story the other day about this dude who didnt cherish a flower enough until it peaced out to do flower stuff idk its not pertinent to the story DAVE: except the flower was a person DAVE: because it was a metaphor

Oh right, coming back to the Little Prince stuff I was too lazy to metaphor-deep-dive into, and literally asking the same questions we were asking about who the Little Prince’s story applies to mapped here if anyone at all, like Dirk and such, or what biases were in the retelling of it and the way Kanaya phrased it.  So now we’re practically mocking it by deep diving it here, hence the last page’s “DAVE: i was just thinking through some really convoluted metaphorical horseshit”, which means we’re both about to further explore AND shit all over the existence of this story metaphor until it doesn’t mean anything and most of the meaning we drew from it earlier is made a joke~

well, not “we”, cause I was too lazy, so... y’all

DAVE: anyway what goes down in the story is that once the flower lady is out of the picture DAVE: the main character goes around making all these connections between her and everything else in the universe until every damn thing feels like a symbol for how much he fucked up and how much he will never see her again KARKAT: THIS SEEMS PRETTY FUCKING INTENSE FOR A KID'S STORY DAVE: yea thats pretty much what i said

Oh holy shit.  That’s yet another way to put it.  Are we doing a whole moral takedown of the Light aspect today?  cause it sounds like we’re taking a dump on the Light aspect and RoboRose getting too obsessed and immersed in it, which would be excellent

DAVE: but i guess its not so much what the story was technically textually about but more like the version of it kanaya internalized and then told me when we were talkin about how she misses rose

exactly

DAVE: so like now im taking the story she told me she was projecting her feelings onto and projecting my feelings on top of that

yes absolutely, you just rephrased it a different way with that exact same bias

DAVE: this is just one big game of emotional projection telephone so feel free to go paraphrase it to roxy later and make it about whatever fuckin thing youre currently missing

perfect. i need an emoji for that Italian thing for when you pinch your thumb and forefinger together and kiss it

ah this’ll do:

its like the expression “choice” but in nonverbal form

[...] whatever fuckin thing youre currently missing KARKAT: YOUR ABILITY TO GET TO THE POINT DAVE: gotem DAVE: anyway you’re not gonna have to miss that skill of mine for long DAVE: get ready for this shit because i am about to slap you with the point so hard youll fall ass first into the washer DAVE: just scrambling around in there getting all sudsy DAVE: but your brain is gonna be so blasted from the mindfreak of a point im about to make that there wont be anything left to clean

Anytime dave is told to get to the point he is contractually obligated to spend at least 20 seconds talking about how he’ll get to the point in a way that is not getting to the point

DAVE: so its genuinely cool that kanaya can go around creating meaning that may or may not be actually present in every little thing DAVE: connecting every feeling she has to the idea of her wife existing out there DAVE: so i told her she should keep that shit up DAVE: but im having the opposite issue where im struggling to find anything to be that kind of tether because every single thing i could possibly consider about what it is were doing just reminds me of yet another thing to be afraid about

Great examples of Light being good and bad!  Attaching strands of connective meaning to everything.  --though, in Dave’s case AND Kanaya’s case you could argue it’s both bad in terms of effects.  That it’s great for Kanaya to care, but that she should be able to divest herself and live on her own terms without idealizing Rose literally everywhere she looks, personal growth which would be useful in helping bring Rose back to her in the first place.  The struggle they’re looking forward to is largely philosophical, not just physical, and until Rosebot acknowledges that she was wrong it’s not over.

DAVE: everything fuckin sucks huge cosmic donkey sack and im terrified KARKAT: OK, SO I FEEL LIKE YOU SKIPPED A COUPLE NECESSARY STEPS IN YOUR POINT CLARIFICATION PROCESS.

Pretty sure Dave was on the same page as most Epilogue and start-of-HS2 readers.  This situation is pretty bleak to dump our heroes into, no matter how much we believe will be resolved in the long run.

DAVE: ok but were you going with sweet or savory please give me that much at least KARKAT: YEAH IT WAS GOING TO BE SUNDAE-BASED. DAVE: nice KARKAT: YEAH. KARKAT: DO YOU WANNA WATCH MORE GBBO AFTER THIS? DAVE: absolutely

--ah, Great British Bake-Off, can’t say I’ve indulged

do they still have that?? did they save it from old Earth?  or did they go where unflooded Britain used to be and say hey, new show reboot

KARKAT: GREAT. ANYWAY, LIKE I WAS SAYING, FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET HUMAN CHRIST, PLEASE BACK UP TO WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU’RE ACTUALLY SCARED OF. KARKAT: ALSO COME HERE, IDIOT.

That last line is like, exactly as fucking sweet and awesome as we imagined their relationship to be.  :)

> ==>

OH MY GOD THAT’S ADORABLE

DAVE: ok yeah this is a better position to unleash all my inner fears n anxieties from

indisputably.

DAVE: those times its like my mouth was saying words about the situation wherein our friends are AWOL and maybe dead but my brain wasnt fully letting me experience the emotion that goes along with them DAVE: man its like i cant even start genuinely thinking about how afraid i actually am for rose and john without my brain flippin its wad and whiting out DAVE: like haha fuck i hope theyre ok DAVE: now i better make a fuckin joke before i succumb to the gaping mouth of despair waiting for me to fall in it as soon as i look down and acknowledge that its there ogling how juicy my ass looks as it trembles with terror

I really hope that the writers of HS2 know full well that this feeling? the one Dave is describing here? is what many of us who got way overinvested in the well-being of Homestuck’s surviving characters felt reading the Epilogues and Homestuck^2.  So I really hope they’re working through it in a way that will result in a preponderance of GOOD THINGS happening and hope-filled situations.  Cause that “can’t even think about X” feeling is too familiar, and if they understand it as well as it LOOKS like they’re getting to, I’d really like them to give us a helping hand healing.

I think that’s what they’re going for?  Seems hopeful for me to think so, but they HAVE been doing better as HS2 has been going forward, from an emotional standpoint anyway; definitely better than the Epilogues.  And I’ve worked through some of that stuff with the help of that, because it’s MUCH easier nowadays to think about Homestuck without my gut clenching.

DAVE: i guess im just fucked up about how to worry about dirk and be angry at him at the same time DAVE: because if i get as unholy pissed at him as i sometimes wanna be i also gotta admit to myself that maybe i coulda done something different there

Mhmm, Karkat’s potentially a pretty good person to speak with here since he’s done so much work trying not to feel responsible for everything that’s ever gone wrong.

DAVE: also like DAVE: and this by the way adds a whole other layer of guilt on there that i dont really know how to fuckin reckon with but DAVE: even with all the shit hes pulled and the fact that we are more or less heading toward having to take him down DAVE: whatever that is gonna mean and whether or not he planned it like that DAVE: i just DAVE: me and him had come so far with each other and it was really cool for a while to have him and i DAVE: ugh DAVE: i dont WANT to hate him

Yeah, Dirk and Jane’s heel-turns were really shitty for anyone who was a fan of them in the fanbase, as well.

KARKAT: WELL THEN QUIT FUCKING PICKING AT THE SEAM ON MY SHORTS AND SPIT IT OUT. THEY'RE BARELY HANGING ON TO THE DEFINITION OF "SHORTS" AS IT IS.

That is an adorably real boyfriend-laying-in-boyfriend’s-lap thing to do

DAVE: the part i mentioned before about how we really have no goddamn clue how long this trip is even gonna take DAVE: i cant help but feel like its barely getting revved up DAVE: and for me and roxy and jade and callie and kan thats normal shit at best and boring at worst but we all have our immortality to thank for that DAVE: we can just dick around in space for near-eternity waiting to catch up to our friends who may or may not be our enemies now and itll be fine DAVE: i mean no itll be categorically miserable DAVE: but well survive it KARKAT: HOLD THE FUCK ON. DAVE: but you KARKAT: DAVE. DAVE: no lemme say this

Oh god damnit.  Karkat’s limited lifespan.  As if we hadn’t ALREADY covered a nauseatingly extensive gamut of disheartening topics of conversation.  We really have to confront every shred of misery in their past, present and future one after the other after the other in the Epilogues and HS2, don’t we?  >:(

I guess it had to be discussed, though.

DAVE: we dont talk about it much and i got shit to say about it DAVE: its not like i never thought about how youre mortal before but i just thought wed be able to figure it out before it mattered DAVE: come up with some kind of plan DAVE: i was just distracted being happy with you i fucking guess and so i didnt think up a way to fix it DAVE: and now thanks to dirk we have to work it out right the fuck now DAVE: because i cant spend this trip just sitting around watching you get old and die

Jesus.  I mean, WE know(?) that it’s not gonna be THAT many years, but THEY don’t know that.

Unless it really IS going to be that many years and HS2 is going to shamelessly take a fucking sledgehammer to our feelings for no goddamn good reason.  Which it won’t!  Right???  >:T

> ==>

Dishwasher ding

> Dave: Grapple with the clean, soggy consequences of the passage of time.

Hey, don’t make it a metaphor here. --though, fuck.  I suppose we are dealing with everyones dirty laundry.  God damnit.  SURE, deal with it all story but then GET IT OUT OF THE WAY AND PUT SOME SERIOUS FUN AND LAUGHS IN HERE so we don’t feel like we’re wading through an entire garbage dump!!!  *click*

Karkat’s eyebrows-only mouthless frown is really cute.

> ==>

okay Karkat explain the nope you’re lodging

> ==>

*put*

> ==>

*foot*

> ==>

DAVE: ok go on

I mean I at least appreciate the time investment in adorable boyfriends.  That’s definitely something of SOME good value they’re giving us in exchange for this misery

> ==>

That Karkat image makes me wanna do that red-shaky-gif-thing with it

KARKAT: IT'S NOT LIKE I'M NEW TO THE PARTICULAR MOOBEAST WRANGLING EVENT OF SOMEONE I PREVIOUSLY LOVED BRUTALLY TURNING ON ME AND LEAVING ME TO TRY AND CRAM MY FEELINGS ABOUT THE SITUATION BACK TOGETHER ALL ON MY OWN.

True

KARKAT: HE DID THAT ON HIS OWN. AND WE MADE THE CHOICE TO GO AFTER HIM ON OUR OWN.

Yes, and you’ll possibly convince him more of that over time, though not in this short conversation

KARKAT: I WAS FOLLOWING YOUR LITTLE TRAIL OF COOKIE CRUMB FEARS UNTIL IT LEAD TO THE BIG SNACK FINALE OF WORRY ABOUT MY FRAGILE MORTAL MEATSACK. KARKAT: IF I HAVE SOMEHOW NOT BEEN CLEAR ABOUT THIS WITH YOU YET, LET ME GO AHEAD AND RECTIFY THE SITUATION RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. KARKAT: HANGING OUT WITH YOU ON THIS LONG TRIP TO WHO THE SHITTING FUCK KNOWS WHERE IS QUITE LITERALLY THE HAPPIEST I HAVE EVER BEEN IN MY ENTIRE MEAGER EXISTENCE. KARKAT: I'M SO ABSOLUTELY BLISSED THE FUCK OUT OF MY MIND TO BE ABLE TO LOOK AT YOUR STUPID IMMORTALLY SMOOTH HUMAN FACE SKIN EVERY DAY AND NOT HAVE A COMPLEX ABOUT IT.

D’AWWW

And with that darkly angry expression too, that’s PERFECT

I mean it’s true.  What exactly would they be doing DIFFERENTLY on Earth C other than enjoying each other like this?  It’s pretty fucking great.

...hm.  Isn’t this journey-not-the-destination stuff pretty Breathy?  Karkat’s proving more balanced by the moment.

KARKAT: AND I'LL BE STRAIGHT WITH YOU. IT'S NOT LIKE I HAVEN'T BEEN EXPERIENCING SOME COMPLICATED GUILT, MYSELF. KARKAT: THE FACT THAT I'M HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE JUST FUCKING CHILLAXING AND BEING IN LOVE IN SPACE IS A CLEARLY INCONGRUOUS WITH THE REASON I'M ACTUALLY HERE CHILLAXING TO BEGIN WITH, AND I'M NOT LETTING MYSELF FORGET THAT, EITHER.

Pff.  He feels guilty for ENJOYING IT so much.  <3

KARKAT: BUT I RESENT THE IMPLICATION THAT MY HAPPINESS IS REGISTERING FOR YOU AS YOU HAVING TO JUST "SIT AROUND AND WATCH ME GET OLD," BECAUSE I KNOW YOU KNOW IT'S MORE THAN THAT.

I’m glad Karkat knows that DAVE knows somewhere in him that it’s more than that, because yeah, if Karkat thought he DIDN’T know that at some level that’d be a reason to take MUCH MORE SERIOUS offense.

KARKAT: LIKE, JESUS, DAVE. YOU KNOW I'M AFRAID FOR YOU, TOO, RIGHT? KARKAT: OR DID YOU FORGET THE WHOLE HEROIC DEATH THING? KARKAT: I WORRY ABOUT LOSING YOU FAIRLY FUCKING REGULARLY.

Hah!!!  Point taken.  Karkat must view Dave as practically more fragile than HIM.

KARKAT: ONE: WE'VE BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH HELLACIOUS PANWARPING TRAUMA THAT I REFUSE TO NOT ENJOY THIS SHIT WHEN I FINALLY FUCKING GET IT, NO MATTER HOW LONG IT MAY OR MAY NOT LAST. KARKAT: TWO: IT'S NOT LIKE WE'RE DOING NOTHING. WE’RE MOVING. WE’RE WORKING. WE’RE HEADED SPECIFICALLY TO A PLACE WHERE WE WILL UNDOUBTLEDLY ENDURE YET MORE FUCKING HELLACIOUS PANWARPING TRAUMA. KARKAT: AND THREE: WE'RE DOING THAT BECAUSE WE HAVE FRIENDS WHO WE CARE ABOUT THAT NEED US. THAT IS OUR FOCUS, HERE. NOT OUR FEAR. IT'S ABOUT THE PEOPLE WE HAVE TO SAVE. KARKAT: SO DON'T FUCKING WORRY ABOUT ME, DAVE. I'M FINE.

Okay, this is great and wholesome.  I am now retroactively GLAD that this topic got brought up.  :)

> ==>

Dave is still afraid. There is a part of him that will always be, he thinks. He has accepted this about himself. There is another feeling coursing through him too, though. It’s something he's felt before, though never quite so intensely. He looks up at Karkat and understands, viscerally, the simple power his words have. They pump through Dave’s own body, alive and warm and true.

He wonders if Karkat realizes it, or if he’s just, as always, saying what he feels as he feels it. Dave doesn’t attempt to dissect it further. There will be time for that later.

Every really loving moment like this is sort of undercut by the fact that it’s also, in some senses, part of alt!Calliope’s narration and, by extension, her fanfiction.

EDIT 2: There's also either a hint to potential Blood powers or even an explicit Blood power use here that I didn't recognize. I'm leaning towards it's-laying-the-groundwork-for-future-use-of-Blood-powers-but-isnt-magical-in-this-case.

> ==>

Smooooch!

That was nice.  Still gonna wait on doing any commentary til next time or a Bonus update or two, cause I’m beat.  See y’all next time!

[tempest2k]

[PAGES /2 - /84]

So, Vast Error, huh? I’m finally getting around to this thing after being aware of it for many, many years. For a long time I intended to get around to reading it, but it never seemed to happen. For last year I’ve actually been kind of avoiding it for unspecified reasons, but I’m finally ready to give it a shot, and I’m so glad I did. So far, I’m really enjoying myself. I’ve written quite a few notes, so let’s try to convert them into something professional before I pass out at my desk for the night.

Vast Error starts off as any typical fanventure would: an “enter name” gag, and an outline of our protagonist’s interests. Nothing really out of the ordinary. Wriggling days are unsignificant, and the 22nd bi-lunar perigee of the dark season's 3rd blink seems to be Arcjec’s. Oh right, his name is Arcjec Voorat. Moving on. We can tell from the Mountain Dew Code Red cans around the room that he appears to be the Repitonian equivalent of an alcoholic, assuming soda and alcohol have the same parallel on Repiton as on Alternia. So far I have no real way of knowing, but it’s safe to assume I could be wrong here. Just an interesting detail I noticed, because it makes Arcjec out to be even more of a supposed loser than he is already established to be (which I assume is the point, I don’t find his character uncompelling due to these traits).

Skorpe is a pretty obvious take on Skype, which immediately dates this comic to having started back when people still used Skype. I feel so fucking old saying that. Damn. Arcjec’s handle is animatedHumorist, which is funny because this guy seems to not be very animated unless he’s falling out a window. XDXD Also, his quirk is cringe. XDXD

On the subject of windows, some asshole throws a pebble at his. Following is a REALLY nice scrolling panel on page /28. I never get used to smooth scrolling in this art style, but I always absolutely adore it. Even early on, the tech on panels seems to be ahead of what I can imagine was its competition. Arcjec feels pretty certain he’s going to fucking die, so as all brave warriors do, he goes to hide under his desk. Unfortunately his plan is foiled when some asshole messages him. “Blue guy”, or windlessArtificer seems to want Arcjec to play a game, a trope all too common to fanvetures. We need you in the gaaaaame Arcjec. But of course he says no, as his life is in a bit of immediate danger.

It’s at this time I’d like to point out that Skorpe is a horrifying program, and I made a joke about it wanting to kill me in my notes so... maybe there’s something there. I don’t know. Let’s go back to windows, that was a fun subject.

Whoops.

Arcjec falls out of the window, and we move on to a different character. Before we do, though, we get some interesting prose here. It seems to imply that Repiton used to be a different place, or at least that Arcjec used to be in a much different situation. I’m curious how exactly Repiton was different, but it’s not as though there are a lot of clues. Perhaps the violent injustice used to be more comparable to Beforus’ civilization, rather than what appears to be a clear parallel to Alternia? I’m not really sure. Let’s be another character already. Not the blue guy though, because apparently he’s too good for us.

But there’s nothing to worry about apparently, because it’s clown time. I’m sure the audience is ecstatic, but please calm down. I haven’t even hit post yet. I haven’t even pasted the image in yet!

Ok, now you can lose your minds clapping.

That is, if clowns and wrestling are your sort of thing. This is Taz. No full name included here, but that’s alright. Another standard intro plays out, though this time more aggressive. The Merthful Messiahs we’re all so used to from Homestuck seem to be replaced by the much more present and violent Merthamaniacs. This appears to just be Repitonian wrestling, turned into a religion, complete with the violence and death provided by troll societies. Also Hulk Hogan is the twin-president usurper-equivalent on Repiton, I think. I understand what happened, I’m just not sure how to phrase it.

Not a whole lot happens here, though something very noteworthy is that the ocean is totally fucked up. Is this what that prose from earlier was referring to? The oceans are so poisoned and radioactive, that all sealife has become incredibly hostile and cannibalistic. Trolls have naturally evolved to avoid water at all costs. That’s like... a lot of worldbuilding to just casually drop? But I assume it’s going to come in handy for keeping our protagonists from cheesing their way out of predicaments.

I had some notes regarding the ferocity waver and Taz’s Skorpe handle, preniciousOverkill, but I don’t really have anything to say about the subjects. I also wrote “the clown wants to kill me, it’s like Skorpe all over again” in my notes, so if there’s any kind of running joke that would work here, please let me know.

Oh hey, a new Skorpelog. This time it’s with Murrit. I know I haven’t been introduced to him yet, but I’ve known three characters in Vast Error long before I ever started reading: Arcjec, Ellsee, and Murrit. Murrit seems pretty fun. I like how he just seems to streamroll the conversation into his favor. He also talks about that pesky game we heard about before. I smell a SBURB session, but maybe not a SBURB session because honestly anything could happen here. These tropes are all being set up, but will they be subverted? Who knows. Well, you might, if you’re reading this. Is Austin reading this? Hey Austin, how’s it going? Oh shit, sorry, no time to chat, I’ve gotta get back to this blog post.

Cool shot of Murrit. Not much to say here. The fish stuff I mentioned before is actually brought up AFTER this conversation, I kinda fucked up. Anyway, Murrit mentions something about an informant, and based on what little I know about this comic, I’m going to assume it’s the guy we see in a couple pages. Or in this case, the very next section.

Fuck is up with this dude? On the very first sound page, we see Arcjec have some kind of dream about this guy who I’m assuming is Murrit’s mentioned informant. When he wakes up, the narration says it happened “again”, implying skull guy is a regular cast member of Arcjec’s dreams. I don’t have much in the way of wrapping things up, so I’ll end with a random theory I just thought of. Is this guy related to why Repiton’s changed, assuming that’s what the prose meant? Does this guy know a guy who was responsible? Who’s to say?

This has been fun, but it’s 1:30am, and I need to get some sleep. Catch you next time.

[albapuella]

Urges

AO3

Fandom: Homestuck Summary:  When Dave finally gives into his urges, what will Karkat do?

Tags: Meteorstuck, Retcon Timeline, davekat, pov switches galore, present tense CW:  CW: hand holding, hugging, nose kisses Author’s Note:  This is a fic that I wrote in about two hours for the davekat thirst federation server after they were all being Caliborn thirsty on the main. Please note the content tags--if you're up (heh) for all this spiciness, read on. I thought result was worth sharing with the masses. Enjoy!

Dave is walking beside Karkat, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Karkat's dangling hand, the lax fingers calling out to be--

No. No, he couldn't. He shouldn’t. And yet... He tilts his head ever so slightly to see Karkat's hand better. The curve of the fingers. The tips of his yellowed claws. The thick, meaty curve of his gray palm. What would it feel like to--

Dave feels his face go hot.

"ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?"

"oh yea of course dude but youre still wrong about dane cook"

Karkat rolls his eyes but accepts the answer before launching into another diatribe Dave can't be bothered to listen to when Karkat's hand is dangling so invitingly by his side.

He can't. He shouldn't.

Before he can stop himself, he reaches out for Karkat's hand, the warmth of it beneath his fingers even more wonderful than he'd thought it be. His fingers wrap around Karkat's stiff startled ones; their palms meet.

---

Karkat is walking beside Dave, going into detail about the superiority of the comic stylings of Dane Cook, when he feels another hand grabbing his own. It's so sudden, he hardly knows how to react even as he feels fingers intertwining with his own.

He stops walking. His throat is dry and he swallows hard before turning his head. There's only one person who can be holding his hand, but it's impossible. Dave's not interested in him. Not like *that*.

But he turns and looks. Pale fingers interlaced with his own gray, leading up to an arm clad in red God Tier pajamas. A shoulder connected to a neck. A neck to a face.

At least Dave has the decency to be blushing, too. He doesn't have the decency to actually look in Karkat's direction. Instead, he squeezes Karkat's hand.

"DAVE?"

Dave is silent. Then he turns his head, the smallest hint of a smile curving his thin lips. "sup"

---

Karkat says his name, and it's not a rejection. It's not a rejection, but it's a question. Karkat's face is flushed but confused. He isn't trying to pull his hand free, but he isn't returning the gesture.

Dave is worried now, worried he's pushed too far too quickly. He has to do something. He smiles, trying to ignore the nervous flutters in his chest. "sup"

Karkat scowls. "WHY-WHY ARE YOU HOLDING MY HAND, DIPSHIT?" The stutter tells Dave he's as affected as Dave is, and despite the harshness of the words, he still allows his hand to remain in Dave's grasp.

Dave feels a swell of hope. "it was asking to be held dude i dont make the rules" He shouldn't. He's done too much already. But Karkat's so close now, his yellow and gray eyes wide. Dave can see himself reflected in his dark pupils.

Feeling reckless, Dave uses his free hand to lift up his glasses so he can see Karkat in full light. His eyes are even more beautiful without the dingy, gray haze.

---

Dave pushes his stupid douche shades up, leaving them up in his blonde hair. Karkat isn't certain what is more incredible: that Dave is still still holding his hand or that Dave has willingly, of his own accord, allowed Karkat to see his eyes.

Karkat has seen them before, of course. He's caught glimpses of them from the corner of Dave's shades. Seen flashes of them when they've been knocked askew. But he's never been given the opportunity to really look at them. Certainly, Dave's never let him look.

He's so lost in the moment, he's speaking before he can censor himself. "THEY'RE BEAUTIFUL."

Dave ducks his head, his flush traveling down his neck. He holds Karkat's hand a little tighter. "thank you" he says in an awkward way that tells Karkat Dave doesn't get many compliments. "im gonna get crazy here so hear me out" He takes a deep breath. "can i... can i--" He's turned his body to face Karkat's head on. "i wanna hug you can that happen"

For once in his life, Karkat takes initiative. Before Dave is even quite done speaking, he's closed the space between them, wrapping his free arm around Dave's middle.

Dave makes a startled sound but recovers quickly, and almost too quickly, Dave's arm is wrapped around Karkat's middle, too. Their entwined hands loosen and separate, allowing those arms to join the hug as well.

Karkat smells soap and a hint of sweat. And it's warm, so warm. The only hugs Karkat had ever had, had ever endured, had been cold. He'd never hugged Aradia, but he knows that even her embrace would have been cool. But Dave is warm.

He sighs against the other boy's shoulder, relaxing further into Dave's arms. He feels breath on his cheek; it smells like coffee.

This can't last forever, Karkat knows this. He knows that this experiment of Dave's will end, but he can enjoy it while it lasts.

---

For what feels like the longest time, Dave can only marvel at the fact that Karkat is in his arms. The troll boy is hugging him, pressing against him, as relaxed as Dave has ever seen him be. Dave feels a rush of pride that Karkat trusts him enough for this. He feels a rush of shame that he waited so long to ask for this.

He tightens his hold on Karkat as though that will keep this moment from ending.

His face is close, so close to Karkat's.

Dave has never been good at knowing when to quit. He's never known when to be satisfied. He brings his face that much closer to Karkat's, brings his nose closer to the gray nose.

They touch. Dave moves his head and gently rubs his nose against Karkat's.

---

Karkat doesn't react at first. He's mostly confused about what the fuck Dave is up to. As far as he can tell, Dave is rubbing his nose with his own nose. It's not unpleasant, just unfamiliar. It feels... it feels intimate.

He closes his eyes, wishing Dave would stop, wishing that he wouldn't. What is Dave getting out of this? Is Karkat just convenient or--

There is no or. Dave wanted to do this with someone, and Karkat is someone. That's it. He ducks his head away from Dave's, burying it into his shoulder.

"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS WITH ME?"

Dave stills. Then he says, "i want to man thought i was making that pretty obvious" He chuckles, his chin pressing into Karkat's own shoulder. "karkat youre pretty baller you know"

He'd never thought Dave would be so good at acting.

---

Dave isn't expecting it when Karkat pushes away from him with a rough shove. "karkat--?"

Karkat's mouth is twisted into a vicious snarl even as his eyes fill with ruddy tears. "FUCK YOU, DAVE." He wipes the tears away with trembling fists. "IF YOU'RE GOING TO USE ME, AT LEAST DO ME THE FUCKING COURTESY OF NOT LYING TO MY FACE ABOUT IT."

"what" Dave is utterly lost.

"DON'T 'what' ME, ASSHOLE." He crosses his arms, the anger on his face crumbling into a hurt that stabs Dave in the gut. "I ONLY HAVE A PASSING UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT 'BALLER' MEANS, BUT I KNOW YOU'RE NOT INTERESTED IN ME. SO, DO ME A FAVOR, AND STOP PRETENDING YOU ARE."

Dave has spent enough time with Karkat to tell when he's about to bolt, and Dave can't let him go until he clears this up. He grabs Karkat's hand again. "dude karkat listen to me im not lying" To his relief, Karkat doesn't pull his hand away. To his worry, Karkat folds in on himself, his head bowing and his shoulders slumping.

"I'M PAN ADDLED ENOUGH TO LET YOU TAKE WHAT YOU WANT," Karkat says, sounding defeated. "JUST DON'T PRETEND YOU ACTUALLY LIKE ME. I DON'T THINK IT'S TOO MUCH TO ASK."

---

Karkat can't look at Dave now, too embarrassed, too desperate. He should have just kept his mouth shut for once. Should have just enjoyed what little scraps Dave was willing to throw him. Dave is still holding his hand.

"i want you to listen to me" Dave is saying, his voice soft. His other hand strokes the top of Karkat's knuckles as he speaks. "im not using you thats hella gross and id be all kinds of insulted that youd think that but i dont want to make this about me when its about you" Karkat hears him take a deep breath. "im gonna lay it on the line ok i like like you a lot."

"YOU LIKE LIKE ME?" Karkat hates himself for the hope in his voice. He's not entirely certain what "like like"ing means, but he's gathered it's more than being hate-friends. Yes, he and Dave have been getting along better, but he knows Dave only tolerates him because they're both lonely. That's all.

"yea like we're peak middle school up in here passing notes to each other," Dave is clearly gearing up for a ramble, and Karkat smiles despite himself, "do you like me or like like me but weve got to keep it on the downlow so the teacher doesnt notice and find our note because our reps will never survive if she reads it to the class and she will because thats how teachers roll"

"I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND THE CLUSTERFUCK YOU HUMANS CALL AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM," Karkat says and, for a moment, it's like nothing's changed. Then reality falls in again. "YOU MEAN THAT?" He is such an idiot. Such a fucking idiot.

---

The way Karkat asks Dave if he means what he says is almost enough to break him. If he weren't such a stone cold bad-ass, he's certain he'd be bawling now, too. Even so, he wishes he could put his shades back down without Karkat thinking he's hiding his eyes so he can lie better.

"yea dog i mean it i dont lie about important shit."

Karkat has always been an open book, emotions-wise. It'd probably be more helpful if Dave were better at emotions himself, but he can see that Karkat wants to believe him. It's something. "we dont gotta do anything different if you dont want im chill just hanging with you," he says, hoping against hope it doesn't come to that: he wants to hug Karkat again, and he hopes the troll boy will let him. "but i want to... i want to hug you because youre you youre like special ok"

A disbelieving huff. "YOU THINK I'M SPECIAL."

Dave nods. "karkat vantas is totally one of a kind" Well, that just isn't true, is it? "i mean there are a fuck ton of you out there in the dream bubbles but i meant more like metaphorically in that this version of you is the you im interested in hugging and stuff"

---

Karkat almost can't believe how charmed he is by this idiot. Almost. Maybe Dave is lying, but maybe Karkat isn't being fair. The more he thinks about it, the more he thinks maybe that's true. Considering what he was accusing Dave of wanting to do, he's fairly floored that the human boy still wants anything to do with him.

He looks down at his hand still held between both of Dave's. Then he looks up at Dave's face, at his still uncovered eyes, and makes a decision. "OKAY."

Dave blinks. "ok" The corner of his mouth quirks upwards. "ok"

Karkat rolls his eyes. "YES, THAT'S WHAT I SAID. I'M GLAD THAT YOUR AURAL CLOTS ARE STILL FULLY FUNCTIONAL."

"you have got the weirdest names for things you know that just say ears its so much shorter"

Before he can come up with a suitably scathing remark, he's being hugged again.

Oh.

He sighs and returns the hug. He could get used to this. He thinks he already is.

FIN

End Note:  Sorry. I could not add in the kissing--it was just too lewd.

[atalana]

Alright, I’ve just spent 17 hours absorbing the epilogue, and in true Dirk Strider fashion, I have Thoughts.

I had plenty of responses I’ve been considering to this, about two hours ago I was honestly thinking of just dropping in with a fuckin one liner like “So Dirk Three wrote the epilogue” (Dirk Three kinda did write the epilogue, and I’ll explain that too), but we’re on the fucking essay train now and no one’s getting off it any time soon so it’s time to dive into this fucker and get it all off my chest.

Under the cut you will find essays on Dirk, cherubs, ultimate selves, both major Dirk fics (Detective Pony and Theatre of Coolty), a bunch of story bullshit, and my severe love for all Homestuck characters

(But very little criticism of the epilogue, I am no longer about that life)

So the prologue is important here. It’s the main bit of accurate information we have, not tainted by an unreliable narrator. (Well, it is, but less so). The prologue tells us that, with the characters outside of canon, they are becoming their ultimate selves, particularly the characters most susceptible to such knowledge, like seers, or heart players.

Now Homestuck wrestles a lot with the idea of the ultimate self. It is, as defined by the text, the true thing a person is, an amalgamation of every possible version of themselves. It is not a viable human being, because that’s not how human beings work. It basically amounts to Hussie’s character rules, like, there are some ways that these characters will be always, some things they’re prone to, things they like, decisions they’re likely to make, but who the person is within that is subject to extreme change depending on circumstance. The four people who embody this narrative most clearly are Vriska, Terezi, Davepeta, and Dirk.

I’m still not 100% sure on why the ultimate selves outside of canon thing is, but my best guess would be this - within the story, there’s a definite timeline, right? Like, these are the things that are written down, this is what you can see, the word of god (loaded phrase, thanks Dirk), the things that you look at when trying to apply death of the author (even more loaded phrase, thanks Hussie, also thanks Calliope). There’s more than one timeline, sure, but that’s the point, everyone is who they are within that timeline, affected by what happened to make them who they became. Outside of canon is, well, outside of the story. They’re not affected by the story here, they’re just characters. This is a fanfiction site. And what does fanfic do best? It takes the characters, takes who they are, pulls them out of the story, and shoves them in wherever it likes, to become whoever it is they become. And thus who the character is exactly becomes murky and confusing if you’re trying to jam them all into one thing, and it all gives Rose Lalonde a headache. Ultimate selves.

Davepeta liked their ultimate self, it helped two kids who were otherwise struggling with unsatisfying ultimate selves to become a better whole.

Vriska took the proactive approach, by which I mean bullying her other selves into letting her become the ultimate Vriska, which was ultimately useless and gave her no ultimate self at all

Terezi saw her ultimate self, and is still processing what that means for her (but also Terezi is still in canon, so she’s immune to epilogue bullshit)

And Dirk, god, poor Dirk. Dirk was terrified of it. Because he could see his ultimate self and he knew that’s not the kind of person he wanted to become. (And this is where I start using the Theatre of Coolty numbers because there’s no other way to get through this, if you haven’t read/seen it you 100% should, but as a general note, Dirk One is the main Dirk we know, Dirk Two is Brain Ghost Dirk, Dirk Three is “Trickster Dirk” but actually revealed later to be Hussie, Dirk Four is Hal)

Because here’s the thing. Dirk’s ultimate self is him, but it’s also Hal. It’s also BGD. It’s also Bro. And Dirk One was never as bad as he thought he was, but he surrounded himself with copies of himself, so he knew how bad he could be, and tried everything he could to avoid it. We have actual canon confirmation on multiple occasions that Dirk would so much rather kill himself than become the kind of person capable of hurting his friends. Which only got worse after he met Dave and realised Bro existed, like, that just doubled his resolve to Never Be That Person.

(Hey, fun hypothetical, if you kill yourself to stop yourself becoming a bad person because you know it’s inevitable but you’re too good a person to want to go through with it, is it heroic or just? Because I would like to have a lengthy discussion with the god tier clock!)

God, there’s so much I can write on the subject of Dirk’s ultimate self. Because you can see every version of him inside there, there’s Bro in his possessiveness, Hal in his need to fuck with people for no real reason, BGD in his hyper critical nature (beyond what is normal for all Dirks), Dirk One in his desire to never let anyone hurt him again. (God, the “I’ll never let you break my heart again” line hurt so much, because like… I can feel Dirk One in that line, but it’s delivered by ultimate Dirk, and ultimate Dirk isn’t the kind of person who would have even been heartbroken by Jake’s actions. Dirk One poured his soul into that relationship and Jake responded by ignoring him, and like, this isn’t a dig on Jake, because that did make Dirk very intense and hard to deal with, but as Calliope so beautifully put, the children left alone are those who most despair at being ignored. And every version of Dirk was so very alone.)

When sending initial thoughts to my friend, I wrote “Ultidirk is Dirk One but without the compassion or empathy and with an apparently infinite supply of horse tranquilizers”. Which was mostly a joke, but does get down to the core of the problem. Dirk One and Ultidirk aren’t really that different, when it comes down to it. But there’s one crucial element that makes all the difference. Dirk One’s life philosophy is “This is a me problem, so I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you don’t have to deal with that problem, at any cost”. Ultidirk’s life philosophy is “This is a me problem, so I’m going to make it everyone else’s problem. And it turns out that without basic human empathy and morality holding him back, Ultidirk will just… fucking declare himself God, and use that alongside his powers of manipulation to just write a new story in which he is the villain. Very little changes in the scale of things.

(The other main difference is that Dirk One is scared to exist, whereas every other Dirk is scared to not exist, that’s the stuff, good callback, etc etc, that line fucking killed me, and also killed whatever remnant of Dirk One was still lurking inside Ultidirk and god I want to hug him)

(I also want to extract him from Ultidirk and bring him on an Ultidirk murdering quest bc he would be 100% down for that without a second’s hesitation but that’s a bit hard to do)

Now you may be wondering why I brought up Theatre of Coolty if I was only gonna refer to Dirk One as Dirk One and not touch on any of the others. Well, it’s true, saying Dirk Two and Dirk Four when I have simple three letter names for both of them is a bit ridiculous. But then we get to Dirk Three.

Now here’s the thing about Theatre of Coolty. Dirk One appears in Homestuck, as alpha Dirk, in Dirk’s usual shirt with the orange hat. Dirk Two appears in Homestuck, as brain ghost Dirk in god tier pyjamas. Dirk Four appears in Homestuck as Hal, and he wears a red hat because he’s Dirk in a different colour scheme, also because the sprite Hussie eventually made for him based on fanon had a red hat, all’s sorted there.

But Dirk Three? Trickster Dirk? Never appeared in Homestuck. They tried, but it was still Dirk One. Dirk is immune to cherubic influence (remember this point too, it’s important), because his concept of self is so present (and also because he’s depressed as fuck, but that doesn’t necessarily exclude you, it’s just the presence of both at once). And who does Dirk Three turn out to be? Well, they said it from the start, Theatre of Coolty is about the presence or absence of god, who definitely will show up at some point. Dirk Three is Hussie in a Dirk costume, Dirk Three is God, Dirk Three is The Author.

Dirk Three is Ultidirk. Congrats, all four Dirks have officially shown up in Homestuck, to whatever extent this counts as Homestuck, an extent which has been thoroughly documented by its own existence bc this is Homestuck (kinda) and you gotta lean into the bullshit or you’ll drown in it.

So yes, this was penned by Dirk Three. Who is also Lord English in two different metaphorical ways now (The trickster element, and also the fact that the epilogues insist on making Jane a second Condesce, which in this analogy puts Dave as himself and Dirk as, you guessed it, Cherub Master of All. Which is additionally insulting as fuck because Dirk grew up in that apocalypse and would never contribute to recreating it, if Jane ever was inclined to, which she isn’t, but you know).

And LE’s major force of opposition? Adult Calliope. (Also, like, Vriska, but symbolically it’s the other cherub.)

Which brings me to the main point of this essay, and that is that all of this? It’s a cherub fic. And we knew this, from the moment we were offered that choice. Meat or Candy? Well, neither of them are sustainable food sources for humans, not with the meat uncooked like that. They’re not satisfying endings for us either. But it’s all cherubs eat. (Well, that and special stardust, but that was Caliborn’s intermission. This is Calliope’s offering.)

Which again feeds back into the AO3 metaphor because from their introduction, Caliborn and Calliope have been fandom inserts, representing all of us, for better or worse. They read the story, come up with the theories, they write the fanfic.

And Calliope’s trying so hard. But she’s not human. She doesn’t get it, not on a way that connects with the characters, only with the text. Cherubs spend their lifetime alone. Cherubs only have black romance. Cherubs think trickster mode is an acceptable way to solve problems.

And, as Dirk pointed out back when he was still himself, everyone getting married and having a bunch of babies for no reason doesn’t solve shit.

Without a solid timeline, everyone became susceptible to becoming their ultimate selves. Ultidirk is a dick with the powers of actual capital g God, and none of the remorse of Dirk One, so he took control of the narrative. And so Calliope, the fanfic author, the one with the power to write a new story (with the exception of Dirk, as previously mentioned, he’s immune to cherub bullshit, and John and Terezi, who are still in canon), tried to help everyone realise their full potential.

But she made them selfish. She made them solitary. She doesn’t understand how humans work, so they became parodies of themselves. In meat, there’s a plot, but it’s insubstantial, because no one is truly themselves, facing a Dirk who lost himself years ago. In candy, it’s fluff with, again, no substance. It’s trickster mode calmed down. Everyone gets married and has babies, but it makes no sense, and everyone’s miserable.

And John Dirk and Terezi are the only ones who see it, because they’re the ones who haven’t been given to Calliope. But what’s the point, when they’ve lost their power over the story? What’s the point of gaining power if you’re not yourself anymore? (And one way or another, they all die in the end.)

The rest of them… Well, they do the things the narrative implied they would do, but usually in the worst possible way.

(Aradia and Sollux have been canon neutral since 2011 and they like it that way)

And now we go back to Detective Pony, like everyone and their mother have analysed already. Because yeah, these two things have so much in common, but also, some really crucial differences.

Both are stories in which Dirk takes control of the narrative, in which he is fought for control by another author figure, in which he considers his own role in the story, what he’s created, who’s got the authority (I still love that pun so much), and eventually forces the characters to come to the conclusion that he needs to be defeated, because at the end of the day Dirk is still hopelessly suicidal and like most problems the kids have, this is never addressed outside of ironic bullshit. (Not to him anyway, it’s kinda addressed in candy but I think if you’re talking about someone’s suicidal tendencies at their funeral it’s too fucking late).

But Detective Pony is ultimately a heavily veiled love letter to his friends. Detective Pony is Dirk exploring what he fears becoming, it’s him learning to let go, and eventually he relinquishes control of the book to the characters in it (as does Jeanne Betancourt).

Meat is Dirk’s notice of ownership over his friends. It’s him glorifying having become that thing he used to fear, it’s holding even tighter to everything he fears losing, and ultimately neither he nor Calliope trust the characters enough to pull back. They’re both obsessed with it, in both iterations, this battle between the two of them, even though it was never supposed to be about either of them.

But Detective Pony has an original story, with a timeline. It even has a second solid story for Dirk to come from, since Homestuck itself explicitly states when and why Dirk made it. When Detective Pony sits down to analyse which version of the text is better, it has that substance to fall back on. Jeanne Betancourt’s version is boring but kind. Dirk’s is interesting but cruel. And because the characters are all solid people, not their hazy ultimate selves, they have agency too, and can decide their own fate.

When Dirk analyses whose version is better in the epilogue, his whole reasoning is that neither is good. The characters rarely have any agency. Even the few moments, between Roxy’s void powers and Dave’s ability to stand up to Bro (which, by the way, so proud of him, how many people do you know who, in a situation where their childhood guardian and abuser literally became god and tried to thought influence them into doing something they kinda wanted to do already, would have the mental resilience to say “no, this isn’t me, stop that” and stand by that? Dave is the strongest goddamn character in this whole comic, holy shit), are only hints of who they were as real characters in the story. Dirk takes control, in one version, because he’s lost himself to Ultidirk, who’s overly concerned with how stories are supposed to be written, and tries to wrestle Homestuck into a shape he finds interesting. In the other, Dirk kills himself before he can hurt anyone. (And before anyone gets on my case about Dirk’s reasoning being he’s lost his purpose, his purpose was always protecting his friends.)

But Calliope’s not helping them either, just piling them full of romance and fluff and selfish parodies of themselves and thinking that’ll work out. Giving the villains “redemption” without ever actually letting them redeem themselves. Explaining all about their tragic backstories without doing anything with it. To bring back a very old quote, it’s like when Mario gets the star. He wins, but he’s denying himself many powerful moments of catharsis.

Just with less happiness, more death, and a bunch of weirdly political teen drama. And then when Calliope gets distracted by Ultidirk and gives up, everything unravels completely, but it also lets them live a life which does let some of the characters be happy, in a weird roundabout way. It’s dysfunctional as fuck, but these characters care so much for each other, not even being in a weird self melting fanon bubble could erase that completely. (And then things get buck fucking wild because this is still Homestuck we’re talking about)

(Though seriously, I could have done without the Jane is a fascist thing, she deserves better than that. Like what was the point of decrockertiering her if she was just gonna go right back to that? Also I love Dave but he barely has a leg to stand on in most of those political arguments anyway given how he completely destroyed LoHaC’s economy and once accused Karkat of communism for captchaloguing a chair. And while I’m complaining, Jake English is still not being allowed to consent to fucking anything.)

I’m not sure why this was written. I’m not sure why a lot of things in Homestuck were written, honestly. It’s certainly not a satisfying ending, but I don’t think it was supposed to be. It’s not disappointing either, and it’s definitely interesting, with all of Homestuck’s trademark humor.

When I first wrote this halfway through candy, I’d written the following as an ending:

“But if we’re going to triple kill the author, I think this is just ultimately validating everyone’s own interpretation of the ending. You can’t write everyone’s fanfic at once. You can’t be a cherub, or a god, we don’t write fic about people’s ultimate selves. What you can do is provide a timeline for them to exist in, and a better one, where they have a chance to be the people they have the potential to be. And just to be happy, in a way that feels real.”

But honestly, now? I think the point was just to fuck with us, and also do a fuckton of exposition about canon and the nature of reality

So fuck it, let’s end on a relevant Dirk quote

[paragonrobits]

instead of reading Meat all in one go like i did with Candy, I’m gonna do a liveblog of it; writing my reactions down as I go, covering a few pages, and posting the results later!

here is the first one, in which John makes a decision, Karkat and Dave discuss politics, and Jane’s business skills are called into question. Also, Obama fanfic is canon to this iteration of timelines, it would seem.

Well, Candy was an absolute trip-scape and a half so how horrific can Meat be? A lot, probably.

That last scene with Roxy and Calliope, oh no oh NOOOOO this is tragic and super sad, and he just makes an awkward mess of himself?? Roxy was hoping he wouldnt go? And he just makes it SO AWKWARD. HE TRIES TO HUG THEM GOODBYE BUT THEY’RE ALREADY TURNED AWAY. HE MADE THE CHESS PEOPLE EMBARRASSED. This poor, unfortunate goober.

Leaving letters to his friends, OH DEAR.

Karkat likes the Jake butt, i did not see that coming. Then again, the Harley butt is undoubtedly the most hypnotic. Science facts, people.

Rap battle and robot wrestling sounds pretty fuckawesome honestly

I have to ask; what exactly is WITH the epilogue’s treatment of Jane as Condesce 2.0? With her being a troll-hating fascist that Karkat and Dave are super suspicious of? Like, I can see it as being something she accidentally stumbles into as part of her Super Captalist vibes, but… it’s just being presented as a Jane thing from the get-go and she has never shown ANY signs of this at all. Granted, Jane has had the least interactions with trolls, but she has no real NEGATIVE interactions with them apart from Sober Gamzee, but that had nothing to do with him being a troll, just all Caliborn-ish. This whole ‘Jane is a xenophobic fascist’ thing just is coming out of nowhere and I don’t like that.

“Jane is a xenophobe” “a lot of humans are!” okay karkat, honestly that’s fair. I mean have you seen most of our sci fi? Most of it is either about humanity being ultra superior or aliens being evil, or both. 40k alone is gonna be a strike against us, i can tell you that

KARKAT YOU ARE TOO A LEADER, NOW SHUT UP AND DO THE FRIENDLEADER, TAKE BACK THE TITLE FROM WHICH YOU BEQUATHED TO VRISKA, SHE PROCEEDE TO DO FUCKALL WITH IT.

“People don’t love me!” dont you break my heart, karkat, DONT YOU DO IT!!! DONT, JUST DONT; in all honesty, i love that we ARE getting more of karkat getting back to leader basics, though i totally missed that apparently he thoguht it was about commanding fear and respect? Considering he named his team Adorabloodthirsty, getting FEAR from people isn’t exactly something i associate with crab boi

Homestuck has brought us the phrase “freestyle obama fanfiction”, i am not suprised

“That didn’t involve the american political landscape turning into a nightmarish daily joke” AHAHAHAHA oh man, dave, oh man. Oh man. OH MAN. you missed out on some SHIT LET ME FUCKIN TELL YOU

I am still convinced that Dave and Karkat, and the rest, genuinely have no idea that the Mayor, for all his sweetness, is honestly kind of an acerbic asshole when he DOES communicate. Maybe that’s why they love him so much though

I gotta ask, though. How the hell DID humans get into a dominant position in the government?? Trolls live longer than them, they have immense physical and psionic power, and they have to outnumber the humans pretty significantly. I mean, there ARE more human gods than trolls so that might give humans something of a cultural authority, but by that logic the carapacians should be more dominant since THEY (or at least, the Mayor and company) founded the society in the first place. And what the hell is this stuff about hummans being more naturally ambitious? I mean they might come off that way because they’re being contrasted against consorts and carapacians, who are engineered to be generally group-thinkers, but c’mon

Psst, hey. Did you remember that ALTERNIA IS NOT THE DEFAULT STATE OF TROLLKIND. ALTERNIA IS IN NO WAY A NATURAL SOCIETY. IT IS THE RESULT OF AN ALL POWERFUL MANIPULATOR WORKING BEHIND THE SCENES TO ENGINEER A SOCIETY, AT EVERY LEVEL, TO BE RUTHLESS AND BRUTAL. BEFORUS IS THE NATURAL STATE OF TROLLS; it wasn’t PERFECT but if you go by how they wound up without interference, trolls should be winding up as a culture of coddling and easy-going caretakers. In-universe they sohuld GODDAMN KNOW THAT, COME ON

Okay, this confirms something for me, though; this is a post scarcity society. They dont NEED TO SPEND MONEY ON ANYTHING. THERE IS LITERALLY NO REASON FOR WEALTH OR MONEY TO EXIST IN ANY FORM WHATSOEVER. So why even bother with the pretense? What is the POINT of people having jobs if all resources and products can be produced on the spot??? Like your wealth is meaningless, Dave, and honestly you have to know that and you’re keeping it going because its part of your aesthetic to fuck around and amuse yourself with the knowledge that its pointless to care about valueless money but, STILL. SERIOUSLY. It does illustrate his point that Jane doesn’t realy know what she’s doing when it comes to business, though

(im not saying that Terezi needs to be here and just leaving Vriska to her own devices and hanging out with Dave and Karkat and helping them build a better world and making bizarre comebacks but… she does, someone do an AU of ‘President Karkat and Terezi is his terrifyingly charismatic vice president’ please

...okay but WHY is the world seeming to follow the American political system. I mean, why though

I dont know why but it really makes me happy that the Dirk Decapitatio Meme is actually canon. I mean, not like in the Candy route. That was fucked up beyond all recognition.

[homesception]

May 31, 2013 - part 1: wherein Lobac eats a cookie.

To be fair, it has been like two hundred years since my last update.  That’s a pretty good nap.  Just means I’m all the more rested to work on new stuff, right?  I mean, I need to keep a spritely pace up if I still plan on catching up to Lobac’s liveblog before said liveblog catches up to the comic.  Which for sure is still an actual thing at all, and not a bit of exclusive humor between friends.

Last time Lobac was getting into some theory crafting and analysis of the classpect system.  I didn’t have much to say about that at the time, particularly not much that wouldn’t qualify as spoilers, so iirc I was mostly just responding with random thoughts and video links, half of which are dead now.  There was a bit left over looking at the troll’s perster names, which was also good stuff, but lacking anything coherent to say about it, I’ll just gloss past the rest of that post, apart from:

Lobac said:

Thank you all for sticking around °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

As if you could ever get rid of me.  ~{@PQ}~

Moving on, we rejoin the comic with PM visiting the Black Queen to retrieve the mysterious GREEN PACKAGE, which had been impounded by agents of the Black Court as a result of a traffic violation.  The Black Queen cuts an imposing figure, and Lobac is, of course, duly imposed.

later, Lobac said:

Are those… tentacles ( ´ _ ｀) I thought only the imps were affected by the prototypings?

OH SHIT OH SHIT THAT LOOKS SO COOL HOT DAMN (゜▽゜) Wowow look at her joints! Look at all the carapace-y stuff going on there!

These days, Lobac’s soft spot for this particular sort of shiny, black, possibly betentacled monster-type aesthetic is well documented.  I’m pretty sure she would have loved the black queen’s design even if it wasn’t just objectively cool as hell, but that certainly doesn’t hurt.  I’m kind of sad that we never got a proper fight scene out of this particular version of her.

That’s not a spoiler is it?  I’m pretty sure that’s not a spoiler.

Yeah, the random objects the kids threw in the general directions of their seizuresprites are directly affecting the final boss. NOTHING COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG HERE EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE

I don’t see the problem here.  Nothing the kids could possibly put in those sprites could be at all unsettling or dangerous.

haa haa.  hee hee.  hoo hoo.

Her face is so weird though It’s Jaspers-shaped, and her eyes are constantly narrowed, I can’t even tell whether it’s in distaste or amusement

Why not both?

Andrew sure is proud of that hand’s close-up She’s not even dramatically pointing she’s literally just saying “yeah I dunno anything about that kinda shit you best go down there and ask my pretty princess, I mean, subordinate”

It is a pretty great hand, honestly.  I think this particular image gets called back to a few more times yet.

Yeah Rose! You go and fulfill your as of yet unclear vaguely Seering-related destiny

Yeah, Rose!  Get on that, maybe!

ROSE NO YOU ARE 13 THAT IS GONNA TASTE AWFUL TO YOU Heh I legitimately don’t know whether her mom would be proud of or disappointed in her if she could see her now Is this an act of defiance or emulation Just silly teenage antics, probably, but I’d like to think she misses her

Rooooooose Rose nooooooooooooooooo （ ´ω｀） Ehehe I love how the artstyle turns super silly to reflect how upset/surprised she is

These two panels constitute one of the most iconic funny moments in the comic.  It works really well.  Shoot, I should have done the post topper-edit based on these, huh?  Oh, well.  The one I already did took like four hours, mostly due to my extreme rustiness, so I’m not going back now.

Otherwise, I also like to think of Rose missing her mom here.  Maybe not admitting it to herself, but still.  I also still ascribe to the “everything Mom ever did was 110% unironic, Rose made up the whole passive aggressive conflict between them in her head, her mom wasn’t passive agressive she was just a bonkers drunk rich lady” headcannon that I think I spoke about ages ago in this very liveblog.

Anyway, yeah, this is both a hilarious joke and a fantastic little character moment for Rose.  Another contributing factor to Rose being my big early favorite with a seemingly insurmountable head start in the ‘best character’ race.

Actually, lately, since the end of the comic, she’s been gaining ground again for me?  I mean, one of the trolls definitely surpassed her for most of my Homestuck fan life, but... eh, whatever.  There’s no way I can getting into how my feelings about those characters developed over the comics life without being way more spoilery than even I’ve already been, so that kind of talk will have to wait for later.  Even if later means ‘years from now’ or ‘never’.

BOO FUCKING YAH, IT’S THE WHITE QUEEN Or Windswept Questant, for now She’s also as of yet uncorrupted by the kids’ silly sprite shenanigans

Lobac had been waiting for this reveal for a while, I think.

PM: Command John to put the carved tablet into a pyxis.

You follow the command telling you to command John to put the carved tablet in the pyxis and type, “John, put the carved tablet into the pyxis.” You successfully do that, and he successfully does that too. Everyone is friendly and cooperative.

Ah yes, you so rarely get this kind of friendly cooperation from narrators these days

It was a rather uncommonly tidy sequence, for this comic.

Shit I just remembered those typing hands we saw when trying to name Jack, the reader is like a physically present entity??? Maybe???

What prompted this thought?  The earlier black queen hand image hanging in your head, then a bit about narrators entering text, and that old bit just pops up?  It’s cool how brains work, making intuitive connections and all that.

What if we eventually zoom out to reveal a human exile commanding everyone. We’ve only been watching that human mess around up until now. The real story begins when they just suddenly go “whelp that was kinda fun. gotta look for food tho” at an incredibly dramatic moment.They turn away from the console.  And then we watch them slump through the desert for thousands of pages and their journey of introspective self-discovery is the actual story. Yes.

Shit, Lobac just predicted the whole narrative!  No point in continuing this liveblog, I guess.  “[#P%]t

Well, obviously this means that WV has an uncanny knack for distances and PM has one for sounds AR can probably track down crimes by their scent He’s like McGruff the Crime Dog, but a little less fluffy

I used to love McGruff the Crime Dog.  Until I grew up and realized he was a tool of THE MAN.

dear gOD SHE REALLY IS PUTTING JACK IN DRESSES (*≧▽≦)ﾉｼ He and Slick are basically the same person, right? Oh man he is gonna stab the shit out of her one of these days

~{%|%}~

Jack Noir, more like JACK NO. NO YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE OUT THERE MURDERING PEOPLE AND FROLICKING THROUGH THE STREETS WITH YOUR ASSHOLE CREW. WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS IS PATHETIC o(`д´ ｡)

I’d say this is a “be careful what you wish for” moment, but I think Lobac knew exactly what she was doing here.

Ticket? Oh, this thing. Ha, ha, look at that, you are holding a ticket. How did that get in your hand? It belongs on the desk with the others. No, you are not here to pay a parking ticket. You explain to the frightening man that you are here to pick up that green parcel.

GIVE ME A C! GIVE ME A U! GIVE ME A T AND I AND E! sheeEEEE’S A CUTIE!!!!

Honestly, they’re all cuties.  the cuteness of the entire cast, even the villains mostly, in both visual depiction and personality, really is a big selling point of the whole comic.

There was a time when I wasn’t super into cute things.  I was never viscerally opposed to cuteness, never when through a virulently anti-girly-stuff phase, but these days I’m MUCH more into things being cute.  I just like cute characters!  Sure, I like things that are somber and spooky, but the best is when they’re somber and spooky AND super cute!

Like, Hollow Knight.  That whole game is like exactly my favorite aesthetic these days.  Sad and morose and dark and adorable.

But more often than not homestuck still comes pretty close to that ideal.  You just want to hug the shit out of all of these doofuses, a few stab wounds here or there be damned.  Speaking of stab wounds...

WHOOPS TENSION. THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT. I DO NOT ACTUALLY WANT YOU TO START KILLING PEOPLE OK

Maybe Lobac didn’t know what she was asking for earlier.

Wait, the crowns, what the fuck, he wants her to KILL THE KING AND QUEEN??? SHE’S JUST A MAIL LADY ヾ(´･-･｀)ノ”

How does he even know she’s desperate enough to kill people just to get one package?

The PARCEL MISTRESS departs with her mission of double agency. You wonder if she’ll actually be so foolish as to attempt to uphold her end of the lopsided bargain. You make a policy of handing out a REGISWORD and a HITLIST to just about everyone who enters your office. But you never think anyone’s actually going to GO THROUGH with it. 

What a phenomenal asshole That explains that

pretty much.  As for the box itself...

Yeeeeah you’re not actually gonna show me so, go ahead, taunt me, get it over with

PFFFFPFPFPFPFFF WHAT SOMETHING COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS APPARENTLY? NOT AS RIDICULOUS AS HIS FACE THO. Magnificent asshole cutie

Hahah, \[&P%]/

Anyway, at this point the action cuts back to the kids, and that seems a good a time as any to take a break.  I could just save this as a draft and finish the rest of lobac’s post later?  I mean, then I wouldn’t have to take extra time for another panel edit?  But I kind of want to post something now, so I guess well do this one in parts again.  part 2 scheduled for, let’s be ambitious and say may 2022

How did I ever use to have the time for this blogging shit?  I’ve been working on this for like six hours, and only got like a third of the way through one update?  I guess I was just younger then.

I’m so old now.  Time just gets away from me.

And my back hurts all the time.

[oh-no-an-opinion-blog]

I really liked Lanque’s Route in Friendsim, especially the “problematic” endings

Discourse and Spoilers, don’t read if you’re just looking for rage fuel. Or do. You control your own actions, and as long as you take responsibility for them everything will be Gucci. We good? We good.

Fight me if you want, but I’m putting it out there. I am happy to have a character who is trans, but who also has other elements to their personality even if they aren’t innocent. Yeah he’s got flaws, so does everyone else. Alternia is an alien planet with a culture is clearly different from ours, and that needs to be taken into account when considering what’s “problematic”. We’re talking about a planet of kids being raised by animals or by themselves on the streets into a classist society where they are allowed to murder each other for a physical trait that they can’t control somehow permissible but as soon as someone acts like an ass and tries to get some serious action it all goes to the fan? There’s a lot more “problematic” behavior we could be worrying about but we only hyper-focus it on Lanque because he’s canonically trans. Not every trans person is a good person, and characters who are trans shouldn’t be sheltered from some more tricky personalities to handle.

Idk man, I fuckin loved how V straight-up went out and said that you had to own up to looking at the problematic material. They called out the discourse, and after writing a route like the one they did for Marvus none of us should be surprised. The idea of it being Hussie is one I personally like, but even if it’s not I think it’s great that they don't hold back just because of what some fans think. They deal with characters like they’re actual people, meaning that some will be what others think is problematic. 

I’ve seen a lot of people upset at the fact that Lanque called out Lynera, and don't get me wrong that was hella uncalled for, but have y’all considered that maybe since we haven’t known Lynera for the last 2.43 sweeps (which is what, about 5 years? As long as a middle or high school career?) we don't know the kind of shit she’s been talking? It’s a bit unfair to judge yet, really. He doesn’t take her feelings into account, but then again was she taking his when she was saying shit?

Lanque is selfish, but dare I present the fact that he’s gotta sacrifice himself to the caverns when he goes off-planet? Maybe he’s projecting a bit when he is so crude calling out Lynera, holding on to the little bit of freedom he can still take before the trials. I dunno, food for thought.

If the issue is the sexual nature of this route I would like to remind people that the MC still has the ability to make choices for themselves, shown when they refuse the drugs even after Lanque tries to coerce them into it (good job protag I love you) and aren’t being forced to do it in a fashion similar to how Ardata controls them early on in the game. That, and after being denied Lanque doesn’t force the MC to do anything. Yeah he pokes fun, but he still stops. As for dancing, it's sexual, and the MC even states that they know what he wants and it might be more than they’re willing to give, but they go with it because it “feels good”. That’s kinda why people do things like this in the first place, isn’t it? And in the bedroom scene, again, the MC doesn’t say no because you as the player consented at the start to seeing the kind of material that the mature content warning covered such as sexual situations, language, and coercion. The decisions of the MC are executed based on the presumption that you followed the rules Ardata set when you first agreed to play through this version of the route(aka being of legal age to see mature content, being aware of the specific mature content contained, and knowing yourself well enough to know whether or not you could handle possibly problematic content). If you looked at the warnings and thought “I can’t handle some of these aspects” and yet continued on anyway, that’s on you. If you did it just to fuel your rage against Lanque, same deal. You could have played it safe, and even if you didn’t whether the MC and Lanque “pail” is up to you. You either consent by keeping your mouth shut like Lanque tells you too or you don’t by calling Bronya in to take care of the situation, which you get rewarded for by getting the good end. Even the Hiveswap team knows that there’ s only so far they can go reasonably, literally labeling the option as “Call in his mom. This has gotten problematic enough.” 

Yes, opting out of it does get you some grief, but it’s a reflection of the general crowd that wanted to see a “safe” character in a world that really doesn’t have them (not to mention the nicely added piece in there about bi erasure, especially since trolls have a default bi/pan sexuality but as soon as same-sex attraction is seen that concept is thrown out the window). They gave some people what they said they wanted, but not without a clear jab to say that they’re not doing it necessarily because they want to. And don’t worry folks! Us sinners who decided to go all the way and then get tossed aside got dunked on too (but hey alien coochie amirite). So teasing for both sides! Equality! Yay!

The team honestly had the right to pull this. We couldn’t even behave when we first learned his damn pronouns. TWO LETTERS threw everyone into an uproar. Let’s not forget that this is considered THE SECOND ROUND OF DISCOURSE and there will probably be more when he reappears in Hiveswap Act 2. They were damned either way they tried to go, so they did both. It’s a spiteful move, but the Homestuck fandom is one of the few places where that can be done thanks to the unique relationship between us as players and readers and community creators, and them as canon creators and the facilitators for the whole thing. 

I’m sick of flop/problematic/discourse culture. I’m sick of overused exclamation points!!! being used!!! to try and make a point more valid!!!! and right!!!! I’m sick of wig-snatching, tea-sipping, uwu-ing, social justice phrased-as-if-you’re-above-all-of-this bullshit being perpetuated as legitimate discussion. Yeah, I sound like a dick here and I’m being petty, and that’s the point. This isn’t so much satire as it is how I close I can get to posting something related to discourse. I’m not putting out a twenty-page analysis on how “bad” Lanque really is or isn’t until my hand is forced to give my evidence over and explain how I as someone who is over 18 with reasonably neutral views sees him not being that problematic compared to a lot of other content I’ve seen with similar themes and actions. I’ve played Dramatical Murder and Boyfriend to Death, and if you want problematic I dare you go play one of those games.

TL;DR Ardata warned you, everyone complaining about how problematic her party was is playing right into the hands of the team, and the only ones to blame here for the drama are ourselves.

If you get owned, fucking own it. And boy, we sure as hell did.

[fantroll-purgatory]

@47098

Hi again! You guys helped me a lot with my trolls, and you helped me a bit with her already, but if it’s alright I’d like another review! 

Name: Cris Wright 

Is this a reference to Phoenix Wright or do you just like the name? Hehe. I would almost recommend changing the surname to Binyot as a reference to Vinny Vinesauce, a really famous game corrupter, but… since I don’t know your reasoning behind this name, and human kid names tend to have less rhyme and reason, I will Approve It.

Age: 14 (or the equivalent of about 6.9 sweeps)

Weapon: Grappling hook!

As cool as that is, I think maybe hammerkind or scrapkind would work best for her, as a reference to her interests? It seems a lot more likely that she’d be carrying around her bangin’ hammer, or a piece of sharp scrap that she could kick ass with. Unless she utilized the grappling hook to get away from the beast in her home? But it doesn’t sound very useful to use a grappling hook inside a house… I guess I’d need more context LOL.

Inventory: Looks like an old point and click adventure game’s inventory system? Also it keeps track of her health. It has the possibility of getting ‘corrupted,’ but I’m not sure how it would get corrupted.

Since she’s a heart player, maybe it could get corrupted by giving her Way More Lives. Just hearts going all off the screen. Especially if she gets god-tiered in a really unorthodox way that could result in glitching. 

Symbol: Missingno’s ghost version, colored green to match her glasses/ eyes! It matches both her love for video games and is sort of similar to how the events of her story play out. Thank you guys for the suggestion, back when!

Oh I’m glad it was helpful! 

Handle: screapmetalMaster [SM] - screapmetal is for her scrap metal sculptures and her inability to type well. Master is because of her false confidence and bravado. 

Quirk: types in all lowervase and often makes extremely easy to fix typos because she types extremely fast and doesnt check her spelling before pressing send and makes herself look like a complete dumbasss 

FUCK i mean lowercase, also dumbass should ujust have like two s

JUST FUCK 

(uses capitals to emphasize words, mostly curse words, and corrects herself using said curse words. Often makes typos in the correction as well. Doesn’t use commas or apostrophes,  most of the time, and doesn’t capitalize names.)

Haha I love that, it’s a really simple and effective way to communicate her tendency towards haste. I think it makes sense that she’d be in a rush for a lot of reasons, not the least of which including her… lusus.

Lusus: Keeping this in because she sort of… does have one? A big beast in her home that chases her around that acted a bit like a parent when she was a very small baby. The beast is a creature beyond description. When she turned three, the monster kept away before eventually emerging to begin chasing. 

Now I gotta ask… what kind of beast is it? Like you say it’s beyond description, so is it a first guardian or some chaotic sort? Or a spirit? Some sort of cosmic reach around monster projected by a juggalo? Weird stuff can happen in Homestuck so I’d not be too surprised by any of these options. 

Personality: 

Excitable, self-loathing.

Extremely excitable, as in she gets EXTREMELY EXCITED over things she is interested in. She hates sitting still, preferring to wander around aimlessly even if she has seen everything before. She has a hard time connecting to people, but if she does she will ride or die with them. She has a hard time believing anyone really likes her, but still tires her best to be what she considers likable. She doesn’t know what other people are like, though, so she often isn’t very good at making impressions. Every mistake is just another reason to hate herself, but she never lets other people know how she really feels about herself. She absolutely has a phobia of talking about herself, just the thought making her panic. She perceives everyone as being better than her, viewing herself as some kind of cosmic fuck-up that was shoved into the farthest corner of the galaxy to be forgotten.

She is very earnest, seeking ways to do things and enjoying problem solving, but when social interaction comes into play she is completely blank. She has never been around people, so this is to be expected, but it is still almost impossible to speak to others in real life. She has a bigger problem speaking to other humans, as trolls are easier for her to talk to because she relates more to them. 

She has a phobia of being touched, but finds that she is okay when she initiates the touch. 

Ooh, I do like this personality a lot… Being unable to sit still because of how she grew up and this feeling of suffering and this desire for closeness… An inability to connect emotionally and a search for a sense of self, a need to look inside and figure herself out… I also adore that her theme color is green, because it feels like a nice nod to the doom aspect, which feels pretty connected to her too. 

I think you should focus a little more on her desire to build a cohesive identity. You mention her outward confidence/calling herself a master, so maybe make her someone who is a bit of a compulsive liar. Who tries to overstate who she is and what she is capable of, because that’s what she thinks people want to hear, and she wants to present this cohesive outward identity to try to find a sort of stability within herself. 

Interests:

Turning scrap metal into very scraggly, usually sharp sculptures. She basically puts a pile of scrap down and hits it with a hammer. 

Video games, or more specifically fucking up the game’s coding to make weird things happen. 

Programming (In a broad sense)

“in a broad sense” made me laugh. My favorite thing people do is organizing game menu items in a particular code sequence to make events happen in speedruns. Would she do that sort of thing? 

Adventure (in a “i want to see everything and mess it up!” way instead of an “i want to explore the world!” kind of way) 

Maybe you should have her have like, a youtube channel or something of the short where she shows off her glitch fun to try to give herself an ego boost. 

Title: Mage (??) of Heart 

I’m… tempted to make her a Knight of Heart. I know Maroux is a knight, but Maroux’s a troll and Cris is a human, so that should be fine yeah? It just seems like she has a lot of need to self-focus and work on who she is and learn to be confident in herself and her abilities and her identity.

Land: CORRIDORS and SCRAP 

Essentially leaving what she used to have and being thrown back into it, like the universe is telling her that she can never leave what she was born into. (if that makes sense)

Oh that’d be so stressful for her but you’re very right about it being a good idea. It would create a quest that forces her to work on self reflection and exploration instead of an examination of the world around her.

Dream Planet: Derse 

For sure fitting!

thank you guys again!

Always happy to help! Thank you for sharing another wonderful character. Here’s the design notes:

So I really didn’t have much to edit here. I moved her face down to match the style’s proportions better, including moving the hairline down. I made the jacket a uniform color to preserve simplicity. And I added shoes (edited from fan-troll’s) because I feel like if she needs to run it’s a good idea for her to have some reliable running shoes. Unless she wears socks because she needs to sneak? But even then working with a ton of sharp metal scrap while shoeless seems foolish.

She’s a great character! I hope this helps!

-CD

[blatherkatt]

Title: The Calm Is Terrifying When The Storm Is All You Know [Homestuck]

Chapter 27: Surviving 

Summary: There were two kinds of trolls who went to Earth: rich shitheads with too much money and free time, and desperate assholes who couldn’t survive on Alternia, even with the best efforts of the young Condesce. Karkat hated the planet almost immediately, but with his home planet too dangerous for mutants, he really didn’t have any choice but to hide out on this weird little diurnal planet. At least he’d be safe. Or so he thought, right before blundering his way into an accidental friendship with the son of an anti-troll terrorist.

Rating: M

Chapter Warnings: Implied abuse (physical and emotional), threatened violence, group-led abuse, neglect, enabling of abuse and neglect, alcohol mention, mentioned terrorist activities

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Dave idled outside the bathroom, keeping himself alert for any sounds that weren’t the gentle noise of the shower within. It was about three in the morning, which was about the only time that either he or Dirk could safely snag a quick shower without alerting Bro’s men, and Dirk had been pretty visibly frustrated with the now-going-on-three-day-old hair gel situation, so Dave was keeping careful watch.

The bathroom was mercifully close to the cellar, and thank fuck for that, because helping Dirk get up there was a fuckin’ ordeal. Dave only came up to about Dirk’s chin, and even with Dirk being pretty skinny, he was still a lot heavier than Dave himself. And he still couldn’t put any weight on his bad leg, which meant that helping Dirk move basically amounted to half-carrying him. What Dirk really needed was probably a cast and a pair of crutches, but they weren’t getting that any time soon, so, fuck it.

On the whole, at least, Dave felt like he was adjusting to things again. It still sucked, but having Dirk around helped, and he’d managed to filch a knife from the kitchen, so that also helped. Wasn’t quite a sword, but evidently he wasn’t allowed to keep the blade down in the basement on account of losing his regular sword to the police, and he wanted to make sure he had something to defend himself.

There was a knock from inside the bathroom, and then Dirk’s voice. Dave shook his head. He’d been so distracted thinking, he hadn’t even noticed the sound of the water turning off, damn. Maybe he wasn’t as used to being on alert as he thought.

“Hey, uh,” said Dirk, “Are you sure you don’t know where I can get some shaving gel and a razor?”

“Sorry, man,” Dave said, “I’m pretty sure Bro’s not to keen on either, and I’m not gonna risk stealing from anyone else.”

He heard Dirk sigh, and then grumble something about “looking like a fucking barbarian.” Dave had to hide a snicker.

“What, man, you not a fan of stubble?” Dave teased.

“Look,” said Dirk, “I have a very specific way I like to present myself. If other guys wanna rock the ‘couldn’t be assed to care about my appearance so I just left this spiky shit all over my face’ look, that’s good for them. Some of them can even pull it off pretty well. Me personally? I prefer to look like I give a shit.”

“Alright, princess, c’mon,” said Dave, rolling his eyes. “Hurry and get dressed, I don’t wanna push our luck.”  

More grumbling. A couple minutes of sounds of shifting fabric and at one point a quiet swear, and Dirk said, “Almost done, just gotta…try and dry my hair here.”

Dave took it as a cue to step in. Dirk was fully clothed and leaning heavily against the bathroom counter, furiously trying to towel off his hair. Dave stepped in and tried to help him out, and nearly choked on his own spit laughing when he tugged the towel off.

“Dude, your hair looks like it’s wilting,” he snorted.

Dirk groaned. “Ugh,” he said, “At this point, it’s gonna take at least an hour of hot water and a small miracle to get the gel out.”

“Sorry, man,” said Dave. “Hey, though, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll go out on a raid, and you can get properly fucking cleaned off.”

Dirk made a thoughtful sound. He turned towards Dave, his face suddenly serious. “Why do we bother keeping quiet?” he asked.

Dave stared at Dirk hard for a moment. “Uh, because we were told to?” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, which it was, what the fuck, Dirk. “Besides, Bro doesn’t have an excuse for who you are and why you’re here yet, dude. And except for Ben, everyone here thinks he and I are half brothers, and until they work out a story for who the fuck you are, we gotta keep you a secret.”

“Exactly,” said Dirk. “We could threaten to be noisy, get ourselves some leverage. Maybe it won’t get us out of here, but it might get the old man off our back, at least, if we threaten to give away that I’m here and that he’s been lying to them.”

Dave could tell that the shades didn’t hide any of the way his face lit up in terror at the suggestion. He could feel the  color draining from his cheeks. “Holy shit, dude, no,” he said. “What, are you fuckin’ crazy? No, man, just — don’t make trouble, let’s just keep quiet and out of the way for now.”

“Why not fight back?” Dirk insisted.

“Dirk, it’s three in the fucking morning,” Dave hissed, “I don’t — can we not have this conversation right now? Please? Let’s just get you back down to the cellar. Quietly.”

Dirk looked ready to speak again, but, thank fuck, decided to drop it. Dave moved to help him walk, and Dirk draped his arm around Dave’s shoulders.

“I really am sorry about this,” Dirk mumbled.

“It’s fine,” Dave said, for probably the hundredth time, “S’ not your fault your leg’s broke.”

“Do you have anything yet?”

Karkat hated the way his voice kept sliding into worried chirps, but he couldn’t fucking help it. His blood pusher was in his throat, pounding away and forcing every sound he made to come out strangled and desperate and needy and, fuck, he needed to know that Dave was okay, he needed Dave to be safe right now, he couldn’t deal with this.

Sollux groaned and didn’t turn around, still rapidly clicking away at the keys of his ungainly mess of hybridized husktops, formed half of Alternian tech and half of Earth’s less organic hardware. It was a fucked up pile of wires and miniature beehouse mainframes (complete with bees everywhere, because of fucking course there were, how did Sollux ever get anything done) and fuck knew what else, all looking to be connected in ways that shouldn’t work but apparently did.

Dave had had a word for shit like that. He’d brought it up, once. ‘Jerry-rigged?’ Karkat had said it was a weird fucking word and that humans were weird for having a word for it, but Dave had explained that the word existed because a lot of times when shit broke down in the middle of nowhere humans would deal by figuring out a short-term way to get the thing working again until they could get to a place with the parts needed to actually fix it, and fuck thinking about that conversation was just making Karkat even more worried about Dave. He never should have left, he shouldn’t have left the Lalondes alone, he shouldn’t have —

“No, KK, I haven’t found anything new in the five fucking minutes since you last asked me,” said Sollux. “And I will be able to sort through this and have a better chance of finding a lead much faster if you stop pacing so much, sit down, and shut up, so please do that and let me do my job.”

Karkat gnashed his teeth together, growling, and resumed pacing.

“The fuck are you doing, anyway?! How is sitting at a computer helping this? Where the fuck is Dave!”

“I’m checking everything I can is what I’m doing, asshole,” Sollux snapped. Kanaya hissed a soft breath, her eyes nervously flicking between the other two. Terezi’d dumped them both here yesterday before rushing back out to investigate, and Sollux had been working at this pretty much the entire time since then. There were a lot of empty bottles and cans of energy drinks from both planets littered around him. (Karkat was pretty sure some of the Alternian ones weren’t even allowed on Earth; he hadn’t even been able to get a bottle of a fucking harmless sleep aid through customs when he’d immigrated to Earth. Something about it being dangerous to humans?) “I’m checking security cameras in a wide radius around the Lalonde house, especially on the roads most likely that he would’ve travelled, hopefully I can get a fucking photo of whatever car they used to abduct those two and maybe even figure out where they’re going. I’m also checking to see if any of the people suspected of being connected to Strider have been seen in the area, if they’re staying in motels or some shit, and — look, it’s a lot, and I need to pay full attention for any fucking clues I can dig out of this, and I need you to not be pulling my attention away from it. Stop fucking pacing.”

Karkat growled again and turned on his heel, stalking back across the room.

This room was too small, fuck. He shouldn’t be in here, cooped up, he should be out there, helping look for Dave, he needed to be doing something, fucking anything! He needed to find Dave!

“KK, seriously, sit the fuck down!” Sollux snapped, whirling in his chair. Karkat bristled and bared his teeth at him.

“How about you shut up and work faster!”

“I can’t fucking think with the sounds of you stomping around and grinding your teeth together, it’s like trying to do brain surgery next to a rabid cholerbear! Sit the fuck down and let me concentrate, you dense nooksniffer!”

“Give me something to do, then!” Karkat whined (fuck that stupid noise for coming out of his throat, fuck everything). “I can’t just sit here with my fucking thumbs up my ass, not while Dave’s in trouble, I need to —”

“Oh, my fucking god, Karkat,” Sollux rolled his eyes, “Get the fuck over your stupid pale crush for ten fucking minutes, we get that you love him sooo much but I have a fucking job to do.”

Karkat froze in place for a moment. Just a moment, stunned into silence born of pure fury, that Sollux had the fucking nerve — he lunged.

Kanaya stopped him before his enraged shriek made it halfway out of his throat.

“Stop this, both of you!” she snapped. “This isn’t helping anything! Karkat,” she said turning to him, “I understand, I’m frightened too. This is an awful situation, but you can’t take this out on Sollux —”

He didn’t wait to hear it. He struggled out of Kanaya’s grip and made a run for the door.

“Don’t even fucking think about leaving this room,” Sollux said, already back to typing away. “You’re under protective custody, you’re not going anywhere, dumbass.”

“Sollux, really, an ounce of sympathy would not be out of place, don’t you think?” Kanaya snapped.

“Oh, yeah, so sorry for all the shit Karkat’s dealing with, let me do my fucking job already.”

Karkat whirled into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him, curling up in the ablution trap and finally allowing himself to burst into the terrified tears he’d been holding back for what felt like an eternity.

Dirk hadn’t been expecting anyone other than Dave or the old man to come down to the cellar, especially after Dave’s earlier if still confusing insistence on keeping Dirk’s presence a secret. So he was surprised to no small extent when, just after Dave had left to deal with the day’s chores, another man came down. It took a while in the dark, but Dirk pieced together after a while that this was the same man who’d been with Derek when they’d been taken.

“Hey, there, Dirk,” he said, his face gentle. Dirk wished it wasn’t. The guy had a smile that would’ve been charming if he hadn’t been so chummy with the old man. “Jesus, you got big,” he continued. “I know you probably don’t remember me at all, but I was in the mall with your father. Last time I saw you, you were still just a toddler.”

Dirk narrowed his eyes.

“The name’s Ben,” he went on. Dirk thought hard. Fuck, Mom had said something about another friend from the mall, what had that name been? Dave had reacted to it weird — was this that same guy, then? That story had been months ago, and Dirk hadn’t thought much of it at the time, just the drunken ramblings his mother was prone to. “I do wish we were meeting again under better circumstances, but, ah, well.”

“What do you want,” said Dirk. “I’m not gonna join you and the old man’s stupid ‘cause,’ he already tried that, if that’s what you think you’re doing.”

“Yeah, I heard about that,” said Ben. “Tried to tell him to be a little more tactful about it, but tact has never been his strong suit, y’know?”

The guy kept acting casual, and it made Dirk want to fucking punch the damn smile right off his face. If this guy was the one Mom had talked about, then he’d been her friend, too, and he’d known where Dave was for years. He could have done something, told her where Dave was, told the police, maybe rescued Dave himself, fuck.

“No amount of fucking tact is going to change my mind,” Dirk said. “I’m not interested in helping the people who stole my baby brother.”

He looked to think for a moment, eyes up towards the ceiling, before shrugging and nodding his head. “Yeah, I can see how that’d give you some trouble,” said Ben. “I didn’t exactly agree with Derek’s choices back then, either, but it’s too late to change that now. So, alright, maybe you’re not interested in helping right away, that’s fine. But maybe you could use a friend around here? I help your brother out as much as I can, and I can extend the same to you, if you’ll let me.”

“I’m not interested.” Dirk didn’t hesitate. He had no intention of putting an ounce of thought into any offers made by his father or any of the bastard’s fucking friends.

Ben leaned back, an eyebrow raised in a sort of amused disbelief. He huffed something halfway to a laugh and shook his head. “Every bit the suspicious bastard your father ever was,” he said softly, and Dirk felt himself bristle all over. “Kid,” Ben continued, “I’m trying to help you. I know it seems shitty now, but it’s gonna get a lot worse before it gets better, and I can promise you I’m the only friend you got here. I’m not trying to trick you.”

“Help me how, exactly?” Dirk spat. “Because unless you plan on getting me and Dave out of here, I’m not interested in your help.”

“Stubborn, too,” Ben muttered. “Apple really didn’t fall far from the tree with this one.” He shrugged. “I’ll let you think about it, then,” he said, almost sounding disappointed. “It’s an open offer, so if y’ change your mind, just let me know.”

“Fuck off.”

There was a sort of unspoken hierarchy to Bro’s band of Merry Fuckheads. Dave was, of course, so far down at the bottom, it wasn’t even worth pointing out, it was so fuckin’ obvious, but he did work to keep track of where everybody else sat. Mostly because knowing that gave him a clearer picture of whose way he needed to stay out of.

Bro sat right at the top, obviously. So high up he was practically untouchable. The Usuals, especially any newbies, tended to treat him with almost a sort of reverence, it woulda been fuckin’ ridiculous if Bro hadn’t legitimately been that cool a dude. Ben was the second in command, but only because he was the only person Bro completely trusted. If Dave was honest, Ben was too nice for most of those guys. But he did important work, and Bro’s decisions were law, so even if Ben wasn’t exactly intimidating, the rest of the pack did listen to what he said.

From there, shit got worse as it went down the pile.

It had started off with just a few people, back when this had started when Dave was only ten. The leadership then had been five dudes including Bro and Ben. Of that group, only three of them were still around — one had died in a raid, and the other one had gotten it into his head to try and usurp Bro, and…Dave wasn’t sure what had happened to him, actually, but he wasn’t around anymore. Fuckin’ Beardy was the only survivor of that group besides Bro and Ben, though, and he was also a special case when it came to who Dave watched out for; he wasn’t the number three in the rankings right now, but he was still pretty high up there, and yet, he definitely didn’t like Dave. He wouldn’t say it to Bro’s face, but the guy had made it plenty clear to the others and to Dave himself that in his opinion, Bro shoulda dumped Dave on the side of some abandoned road somewhere years ago. ‘Ditch the fuckin’ dead weight,’ he always liked to say. Dave didn’t really like that big meathead either, so at least it was mutual. He didn’t tend to throw things at Dave, at least; he only tended to be a big problem when someone else started something and he joined in. Dude was big enough that Dave really couldn’t do much to fight him off.

The rest of the higher ranked members of the Usuals, though, actually sorta tended to leave Dave alone. It was the guys at the bottom of the pile who went after him.

They’d joined in late, and they’d seen how Bro was always harsh with Dave, and Beardy’s disdain, and they’d peer pressured themselves right in on the action. The newer or lower ranking a guy was, the more he’d go out of his way to make Dave’s life miserable. Within reason, of course. Bro would only tolerate so much of that shit. Thankfully, most of the lowest ranking dudes of the dozen men that made up the full force of Bro’s inner circle weren’t here yet. From the sounds of it, they’d been the ones who’d been leading that attack down in Ohio.

Tim had been scowling at Dave since…well, since yesterday, really. Dave hadn’t addressed it mainly because he knew what was coming. Tim had been the guy who’d had to haul his ass out at fuck o’clock back in April to tell Dave about the plan that Dave had then completely blown. It was a matter of time before the asshole picked a fight about it. Probably he was waiting for Bro to be a bit distracted, or calculating a way of going about chewing Dave out without overstepping.

Dave was focusing very hard on sweeping right now, and avoiding anything that might be construed as eye contact, because he did not wanna deal with Tim today if he could avoid it. Unfortunately Tim still took up the initiative anyway, the moment Bro was distracted talking to that guy in the stupid hunter’s hat. Careful not to actually touch Dave, Tim cornered him in the kitchen, leaning in close to talk in quiet, angry tones.

“Dude, lay off,” Dave muttered. “I wanna get shit done before I get in trouble for taking too long, what do you want?”

“I wanna know what the fuck you thought you were doing back in June,” Tim hissed. “Your fuckup made me look like a goddamn chump! D’you know how much shit I’ve had to put up with ever since that fuckin’ fiasco?”

“Lay off, man, I’ve heard it already,” Dave mumbled.

“I don’t think you have,” said Tim, pressing his hand to the wall in a casual gesture Dave knew to read as a threat. “Not near enough, at least. I had to work my ass off to get this high up, way fuckin’ more than the others ever did since I live out here instead of down in Texas. I have done so much to earn the right to be here, and you nearly ripped away everything I’ve built in one fell fuckin’ swoop, not to mention getting a couple real promising new recruits killed!”

Dave gulped. Oh. Yeah, he’d. Forgotten about that. Shit, Tim had been in charge of the actual rescue mission, too? Fuck.

“Now half these guys don’t respect me no more, and I can’t tell what your brother thinks of me, and I’m supposed to just let you walk away as happy as you like? I don’t fuckin’ think so.”

“The fuck do you want me to do about it?” Dave snapped.

“I —“

“That’s enough, Tim,” came Bro’s voice, calm but stern. Dave tried not to be too obvious about the relieved sigh he heaved.

“But — C’mon, Derek,” Tim said, “It’s — he’s the reason that mission didn’t work, I got every right to get some fuckin’ payback, don’t I?”

“He’s my responsibility,” Bro said. “I’m dealing with it.”

Tension lingered in the air for a moment. God, Dave hated fuckin’ standoffs, shit like this happened all the time with the Usuals. It was a way of testing things, Dave knew — there was an unspoken hierarchy to these guys, and whenever there was any sort of argument or dare or bet or what have you, it was a challenge to the order. Who’s the toughest, who’s gonna back down first. Dave was never a participant on account of he was so low in the ranking that even entertaining the idea was a fuckin’ joke to end all jokes. Didn’t mean Dave couldn’t get caught in the crossfire, though, not to mention that the loser of these interactions tended to turn their frustration on Dave. They all acted like a bunch of fuckin’ animals, exerting whatever dominance they could to feel better about themselves.

And Dave’s behavior back in June had apparently dropped Tim a good few levels in the rankings. This was gonna be hell until Tim felt he’d gotten his payback. God dammit.

The standoff didn’t last long, at least. In the same way Dave was hilariously low, they all put Bro up on so high of a pedestal that the only one who really dared challenge him was Ben, and even that was pretty rare. And also less of a challenge and more just Ben suggesting a different strategy. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when Tim broke off eye contact (or. Well. Eye to shades contact), shot a final glare at Dave, and muttered darkly all the way back to his spot on the couch.

This had been Dave’s life pretty much since the fight-the-trolls shit had started, about six years ago now, and as awful as it was, he’d sort of just accepted that this was how things were and never questioned it. He was trying not to question it now, on a way more conscious level, because he was scared he’d give away that he was thinking traitor thoughts or mumble something out loud like a fucking idiot, but.

Things hadn’t been like this at all with Mom and Rose and Dirk.

He’d spent ages trying to work out the pecking order, only to come to the conclusion that…there wasn’t one. Even with Dirk and Rose throwing down, there wasn’t really a clear victor, and the only time anyone had acted like the authority figure was when Mom stepped in and stopped them from fighting. It had been so confusing for so long, trying to work that shit out, because the on the surface it had looked like there should be another hierarchy, but…nothing. They just…helped each other and treated everyone with maybe not a ton of respect but enough that nobody was the butt of the joke, not even Dave.

He kind of missed it.

Shit, no, that was exactly the kind of thing he couldn’t be letting himself think. Maybe Dirk didn’t get why, but Dave did, he knew better. Letting even a hint of dissent slip through was asking for trouble, and he didn’t want any more of that than he absolutely had to take.

He got back to work for a while, trying very hard to act like what had gone down hadn’t bugged him at all. He wasn’t sure if the Usuals bought it, but Ben didn’t seem to. Soon as he was able, Ben tugged Dave out onto the creaky-ass front porch, asking, “Hey, you alright?”

“Yeah, don’t sweat it,” Dave said. “Even if he had tried anything, Tim’s slow as shit. Guy couldn’t hit me if I was tied down to a chair, duct taped to the side of a barn, and also given like the opposite of whatever the fuck happened to the Flash.”

Ben laughed softly for a moment before his face darkened. “Glad to hear it. Be careful, though, alright? He’s still fuming, and Bruce is gonna be getting here in a couple hours with the rest of the gang.”

“Fffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” Dave groaned. Bruce was the new guy as far as the Usuals were concerned. He’d only managed to claw his way onto the bottom rungs of the top of the heap a couple weeks before Dave had gotten arrested. New blood in the Usuals always meant a new guy going out of his way to try and prove himself, typically by showing off how dominant and tough and manly he was by picking on Dave, but Bruce took it to a whole ‘nother level.

“And Derek’s…still pretty fuckin’ pissed off about everything, too, so he might be more lenient than usual with the boys,” Ben cautioned. “I’ve had to talk him out of some pretty drastic punishments. He’s still trying to figure out what to do with you.”

“Shit.” Dave ran a hand through his hair. “I mean, thanks for keeping me posted, I know it gets you some flack from the guys sometimes, just. Shit.”

“Ah, don’t worry about me,” Ben said. “I got Derek on my side, they’re not gonna try anything stupid. I’ll try and keep them off your back as best I can, just take care of yourself, alright?”

“Yeah, I got it,” Dave griped.

“In the meantime,” Ben grinned, “I did manage to get some actual food for you and your brother. S’ in the fridge, should be enough for both of ya.”

“Shit, yeah, thanks man,” Dave said. “Was startin’ to get dizzy, fuck.”

“Alright, that’s all I needed to say for now,” Ben said. “Go ahead and take a lunch break, before you keel over.”

Dirk was ready for another argument when the door swung open again, but it was just Dave this time.

“Hey, guess what I got,” he said, the door clanking shut behind him. Dirk could hear the grin in his voice even before he saw it.

“Something useful, I hope,” Dirk said, “Because I haven’t been able to come up with any ideas, and I’m open to suggestions.”

“Real fuckin’ food, check it out,” Dave said, flopping down and tossing Dirk a wrapped-up sandwich. “Ben came through big time, thank fuck.”

Dirk narrowed his eyes at the food. Looked like it’d been bought from a store, wrapped in clear plastic and definitely a more substantial meal than anything they’d been given so far in their time here. But…coming from that guy, Dirk wasn’t sure he wanted to trust it.

“It’s not poison, man, eat it,” Dave said, already in the process of scarfing down his own. “Like, a lot of these assholes I wouldn’t put it past to put something weird in my food, but Ben’s a pretty okay guy.”

“I think we’ve got vastly different definitions of the term ‘okay guy,’” Dirk said.

Dave stared at him for a moment. “Uh, what?”

“He and I had a little chat earlier,” Dirk said.

“Okay, so you know what I mean, then,” Dave said. “He’s chill as fuck. And he can actually get away with being nice and still keeping his place in the pack, because Bro likes him, so he’s, you know, a good dude to have on our side.”

Dirk snorted. “I don’t fucking trust anyone here, especially not anyone the old man thinks so highly of,” he said.

“I mean, alright, I guess, but, like. Food’s food. Seriously, dude,” Dave said, nudging Dirk with his elbow, “You really oughta eat, man. I got no idea when we’re gonna get food again, and these won’t keep. I mean, unless we shove them into the freezer, I guess? Which sounds shitty, so you should eat now.”

“Why are we doing this?” Dirk said, throwing up his hands and earning a quizzical look from his brother. “Why are you doing this? Acting like one guy giving us a fucking meal is a sign of him being someone trustworthy, when it’s at best basic human decency! Why play along with this horseshit? Dave, we should be trying to fight back, trying to escape —”

“Or we could not do that,” said Dave. “Dirk, I told you, it’s fine. This is… it’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be. Bro’s kinda rough, sure, but Ben’s totally fine! He’s trying to help us out a little, man, and you’re acting like he’s trying to fuckin’ poison us.”

“‘A little rough?’ Dave, that black eye is not ‘a little rough,’ it’s fucking abusive,” Dirk said. Dave rolled his eyes. “You wanna talk about helping,” he continued, “I’m trying to figure out how to fucking get us out of here, but you seem like you’re actively trying to stop me from doing that! You won’t even consider doing anything that might actually get us somewhere, won’t even think about questioning if maybe this shit isn’t okay, which it fucking isn’t! Why won’t you work with me, here, Dave?”

“Because I don’t wanna get beat up any more than I absolutely fuckin’ have to, Dirk!” Dave snapped, all of the previous relaxed air suddenly gone. Dirk froze. “It’s real easy to talk about being a rebel from where you are, safe in the fucking cellar all day, I’m the one who’s gotta actually deal with what happens when Bro gets pissed off! And —” He stopped himself. Dirk was staring, stunned into silence.

“It’d be justified at that point, anyway,” Dave muttered. “It’s his house, or whatever. I get it. Besides, it’s not that bad.” He looked away, unable to meet Dirk’s eyes. “It’s fine. I’m fine. I can take it. It’s whatever.”

“I…”

“Just, please, for the love of fuck, don’t antagonize him,” said Dave. “The less reasons we give him to be pissed, the less either of us gets beat up.”

“I’m…sorry,” Dirk stammered.

“S’alright. You’re new. You don’t know the rules yet.”

“Dave…”

Dave gulped down the rest of his sandwich, wiped his mouth on a sleeve, and stood. “I gotta get back to chores,” he said. “The rest of the usuals are getting here in a couple hours. You should eat the rest of your food.”

“Okay,” Dirk said, after a moment. Dave nodded, and headed out of the cellar.

“And please, for the love of fuck,” he said, out of view by the door, “Stay quiet, alright? I was serious this morning about keeping you hidden, and shit.”

“….Yeah,” said Dirk.

[a-panda-reads-act-omega]

ACT OMEGA PART 22

THE 03/17/17 UPDATE

HERE WE GO, finally an update with a BUNCH of pages for me to comment about. Page 115-126, how exciting. God I need to get better with intro’s I’m sorry.

Heh, I like how everybody’s emotions are clear as day here. Anyways, nobody new’s here which makes me hope that this cast of characters will continue to interact and mingle.

W o ah there, calm yourself Vriska. She’s not lookin pleased with Tavvy over there. Also, I love how this is literally the exact same panel other than Vriska.

VRISKA: Wh8t?! VRISKA: The hell are all of you st8ring at???????? MEENAH: 38/

WHAT? IT’S PERFECTLY NORMAL TO PASS OUT DURING A LIFE-THREATENING BATTLE AGAINST AN UNKILLABLE GOD.

Fish gills changed a bit. This animation is also g re a t. I could literally watch Vriska just dust herself off for hours. God that sounded creepy. Fefefri is seeminnnn a lil taken aback here. And Meenah is real disappointed. Or just looking away to please Vriska, which would be cute but is probably not the case.

I love how not good Vriska is at recovering from embarrassing moments.

Oooohhh shit. Le’s behind the Juju im guessing, but that green hole is gettin closer and closer. They might need to start getting out of here soon.

VRISKA: What the hell just HAPPENED?

Homestuck happened.  And you passed out.

Tavros raising his hand like a student. He would totally be the kind of student the teacher always has to pander to, even though the rest of the class is tired of hearing the same thing explained over and over.

TAVROS: dO YOU MEAN, tHE EXPLOSION,,,? TAVROS: oR,,, TAVROS: WAS IT AN ATTACK? TAVROS: iT WAS HARD TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE, TAVROS: sO MAYBE IT DOESN’T MATTER,,,

Was that explosion he’s talking about just the LE mouth blast? I think it’s an attack Tavros. Less of an explosion than it was a beam with boomy results.

VRISKA: Tavros, stop. VRISKA: Just, stop. Right now. I’m already twice over the limit of how much 8ullshit I can take in one day, and your irrit8ing voice is THIS close to giving me a head8che. TAVROS: uHHH,,,? VRISKA: Nope, too l8. Migr8ne city, popul8tion: me! Thanks a 8uttload, 8oy skylark. TAVROS: i,,,iM,,,sORRY,,,? DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < yeah sorry about your head vwhiskers but i gotta interject here DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < furst off your head hurts beclaws it got hit with a deadly fuckin laser pointer

Hahah. Get it? Laser pointer. Because. CAT. And also, holy shit Vriska got HIT with that?? Or was it just an explosion thingy FROM the laser pointer that knocked her out.

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < so blaming it on tavros f33ls purrty damn rude to me tbh DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but i dont really wanna get into a catfight with you right now DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < or maybe not ever cause thats just like NOPE no thanks

You’re the best Davepeta. Almost as great as Vriska.

DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < cranky vriska? ill pass on that DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < especially since there are like DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < way more important things to be dealing with! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < so ill let it slide fur now B33 DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < as you were saying tavros?

So can Davepeta just be Tavros’ wingman? Because holy shit that’d be great. Actually, could this be the beginning of a beautiful PALE ROMANCE?? Probably not because ARquius is totally their soulmate.

TAVROS: wELL,,, tHANK YOU, fOR SPEAKING ON MY BEHALF, eVEN IF IT WASN’T STRICTLY NECESSARY,

It was necessary tavros.

TAVROS: uHHHH,,,

My point exactly.

TAVROS: bIRD NEPETA? TAVROS: oR, wHOEVER YOU ARE, DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < youre half right! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < its davepeta TAVROS: oH, TAVROS: oKAY, TAVROS: sO,,,dAVEPETA,,, TAVROS: dO YOU THINK IT WAS AN ATTACK OR AN EXPLOSION? DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < tavros DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < are you holding onto your socks because im about to blow them the fuck off DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < i think it was an attack DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < that was ALSO an explosion DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < >B33 TAVROS: }:o

:o MAN, Davepeta you need to chill! I have to go get dressed now, because you just blew my entire OUTFIT off! from shirt to shorts, nothing could withstan the sheer FORCE of your shocking observation.

VRISKA: UGH!!!!!!!!

Shut up Vriska.

Oh. We also got a Porrim back there. And, I guess that’s just Kankri? Maybe the same one, maybe a different? Vriska needs to chill though.

VRISKA: I don’t have TIME for this! VRISKA: Who gives a shit if it was an att8ck or WH8TEVER!!!!!!!! VRISKA: Am I the really only person who c8res about m8king sure the most evil fucker in all of paradox space is FINALLY DE8D FOR GOOD?!?!?!?! VRISKA: Isn’t that what we r8sed an entire army for?? VRISKA: The army that is NOWH8RE TO 8E FOUND, 8Y THE W8Y!!!!!!!!

I think they’re all d e a d Vriska. And you’re assuming way too much of this group of NINCOMPOOPS. They literally are just doing whatever.

MEENAH: vriska VRISKA: WH8T!!!!!!!! MEENAH: you need to krill out for a sec

Exactly. Krill out girl.

VRISKA: NO, *YOU* “KRILL OUT”!!!!!!!! VRISKA: I AM N8T GOING TO KRILL IN A SINGLE FUCKING DIRECTION UNTIL SOME8ODY DECIDES TO OPEN THEIR MOUTH AND FILL ME IN ON WH8T THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED!!!!!!!! MEENAH: the armys gone

Yup. Everybody fucking died via death laser.

FFS CHILL Vriska.

VRISKA: GONE?! VRISKA: No SHIT, they’re GONE! VRISKA: Do YOU see a throng of expenda8le, huddled masses anywh8re near8y, Meenah?? 8ecause if so, NOW WOULD 8E A GR8 TIME TO LET ME KNOW! MEENAH: ...

Calm down Vriska, before you push away the people that AREN’T dead. I mean, who know’s if these guys even care enough to keep working for you anyways. I’d say Meenah’s the last person you should be yelling at.

VRISKA: No?? That’s what I fucking THOUGHT. VRISKA: Th8nk you SO much for that astute o8serv8tion! VRISKA: That sure clears up JACK SQU8T! VRISKA: Now how a8out we get 8ack to the LESS immedi8tly o8vious! VRISKA: Gone WHERE? And more importantly, WHY! MEENAH: listen serks i could really do without the attitide MEENAH: if you took two seconds to breathe you could prolly figure it out yourself MEENAH: but if itll help you clam down...

Exactly, Clam down Vriska. Because it doesn’t take a goddamn genius to figure out they’re all dead.

VRISKA: It DEFIN8TELY will. So spill!!!!!!!! MEENAH: they got blasted VRISKA: Are you serious? VRISKA: He took out EVERYONE? In one hit?! MEENAH: nah not all of em MEENAH: but a lotta double death happened yeah MEENAH: i mean the weapon didnt do flip of what it was SUPPOS-ED to do as far as i could tell MEENAH: it did a pretty good job of sheildin our asses MEENAH: (youre whalecome btw)

Meenah, you’re the true hero here. I mean a calm troll who’s powerful, smart, and only sometimes out of order? I’d say that’s the best kinda troll we can get.

MEENAH: but anybody who didnt get behind it MEENAH: definitely got fried VRISKA: So? Where’s Lord English now?? VRISKA: 8ecause if we need to track him down, we need to get on that like, yesterday!

He isn’t still there? I thought he’d just be doing some angry lord english stuff. Hopefully he isn’t causing too much trouble.......

MEENAH: uh MEENAH: dudes still havin a tantrum over there actually

Oh. I was r i g h t .

VRISKA: Then why the hell are we all the w8y out here?! MEENAH: look vriska MEENAH: the plan didnt work MEENAH: you got KOd or passed out or whatever the shell MEENAH: and the army got gutted MEENAH: so i figured the only sensible fin to do was a tactical retreat VRISKA: Okay, fine. That WAS pretty sensi8le. MEENAH: except MEENAH: most of everyone didnt STOP retreatin MEENAH: no matter what inspirational crab i threw at them VRISKA: .......

Oh.

Oh.

so there WERE more survivors, but the most’ve them just bailed on the scene. Damn. Well, who can blame them? Double death isn’t for everyone I suppose.

Well ARADIA sure seems happy :D

MEENAH: sorry aboat your head by the way MEENAH: ill admit that was my bad MEENAH: aint easy to haul ass in sand with dead weight over your shoulder

To the people behind ACT OMEGA: You better get me a gif of Meenah dragging Vriska face down through the sand.

ARADIA: hey! ARADIA: at least theres a bright side to all this

Of COURSE there is AA.

Awe. This team charge hug is actually kinda precious. Tavros’ little smile, and Aradia’s “appreciate him!” look.

ARADIA: tavros convinced a few people to stay ARADIA: right? :D

Oh, well that’s good then! So far, I know we have... Tavros, Aradia, Sollux, Kankri, Porrim, Mituna, Feferi, Latula, Vriska, Meenah, Davepeta, and possibly more.

TAVROS: i DID, TAVROS: tHROUGH THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP,

TAVROS: aND A LARGE QUANTITY OF WORDS, sPOKEN DIRECTLY FROM THE HEART, TAVROS: eVEN THOUGH IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF ALL OF THEM HAD STAYED, i THINK, TAVROS: tHERE IS A PART OF ME THAT ALSO THOUGHT LEAVING MIGHT HAVE BEEN A GOOD IDEA,,, TAVROS: cONSIDERING, hOW THINGS LOOK PRETTY HOPELESS NOW, TAVROS: bUT THAT PART OF ME IS THE ONE THAT MISSED OUT ON THE COMPLETION, oF MY SUCCESSFUL AND FULFILLING CHARACTER ARC,

He get’s so cocky sometimes, but it’s the kind of cocky where he’s nervous he’s not looking cocky in the right way. What the hell am I typing. I just love how self aware he is.

TAVROS: wHICH IS WHAT THE MAJORITY OF THE REST OF ME IS COMPRISED OF, TAVROS: eSPECIALLY THE PARTS THAT WERE KICKING LORD ENGLISH IN THE FACE, nOT TOO LONG AGO, TAVROS: aND TRUTHFULLY, i AM STILL PRETTY FIRED UP, fROM THAT, TAVROS: sO I IGNORED THE COWARDLY IMPULSE, aND INSTEAD STAYED TO HELP MY FRIENDS, sEE THIS UNDERTAKING THROUGH TO THE END, TAVROS: aND THERE WERE SOME PEOPLE, wHO AGREED WITH ME, TAVROS: wHICH ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE HERE, pRESENTLY,

Goddammit, these people aren’t the brightest. They had to have stayed with him out of pity. If all of your friends are running away, and the only person asking you to stay and fight an unkillable demon was T A V R O S .

You’d run.

Sollux doesn’t wanna be here.

ARADIA: see? sollux and i even stayed to help too ARADIA: in fact were all here to help ARADIA: well maybe some of us are here mostly out of curiosity SOLLUX: 0r b0red0m.

Or pity. Or self-hate. Or a deathwish.

ARADIA: or that too! or maybe even a mishmash of all sorts of motivations ARADIA: but whatever the reason we are on your side ARADIA: so i get the feeling if you dont lighten up a little ARADIA: some of us might suddenly have a lot more of a reason to join the others ARADIA: and find something else to do

Nice way of putting it Aradia. Vriska really needs to Clam down and Krill out, because she’s gonna lose the few she has with her still.

OH SHIT THAT’S THE END OF THE UPDATE. Well then, that’d be my cue to sleep. it’s 2:15 AM an I have summerschool in 5 hours. gnight folks. 

[skaiatemple]

How would you advise I begin reaching out to the spirits/deities? I need guidance at this point in my life...

Well there is ALOT you can do to appropriately do that. I’ll give you some advice on how to best succeed with Homestuck Patrons. This is something I’m fairly experienced with.

First you should think of a character that means alot to you, someone you care for and admire that prefferably also represents things important to you. I can present my relationship to Kanaya as example.

This will be a bit of a testimony on what I’ve done and why I think it’s important. If you want a simple bulletpoint, scroll down to the TL;DR

I’m already a Virgo who cares alot for Kanaya just as that, representing us as a lovesick feminine badass slaughtering alien zombies and crazed clowns with a chainsaw. But she also maintains many of the traditional things of the Virgin sign. A sense of delicate order and motherly nature. Both things I value highly. Also we’re both gay af.

Kanaya is the Mom friend who represents motherly duty and caring. It is her job to raise a new mothergrub to replenish her species. She has this ontop of being a Space player, tasked with also raising the universe frog to its most perfected potential. Kanaya is just Ultimate Mom and she loves that. And who doesn’t need a really good Mom in their life?

All this told me that Kanaya would be perfect as, how would I call it? Leading Patron. She represents my sign, all my ideals, and is just in general a good and trustable person. I called to Terezi first because she was important to me. But Kanaya is the one most important to my ~person~

What I first did and what I’d suggest of any entity you wish to have maintained contact with, is I made a small shrine to her. It originated as a small bowl full of green glass stones and plastic green jewels. I also added a spool of green thread, matching nail polish, and a Kanaya themed bracelet I’d put together.

These things all tie into her blood color and her interests. It’s fashion oriented and eye catching is a way I think she’d like. I’ve since added a green pendant and a second bracelet I use more for representation of her and for. I consider the jewelery making and any other creative activities good ways of honoring her. To top it off I eventually finished a devotional painting of her I printed, framed and set as a centerpiece.

The shrine is set above my alter, I felt it symbolic of her watching over my magic activites protectively. It also holds a offering bowl. (I found she likes fake money, as it represents something but doesn’t take from me. And I also keep a ripe green apple with it) I also keep with it a small glass and decorative plate for food offerings. Sandalwood incense, and a free candle I light whenever I talk directly to her.

I still use the nail polish to draw her energies to me, and I used some of the thread for a bookmark I made for her. I asked her permission before using these.

With all these symbolic things of her in place and my intention to connect to her clear, it wasn’t a struggle to call for her become present. I simply asked her to come to me and provide me comfort and service in exchange for my continued gifts and honor. She seemed okay with that arrangement.

One thing to remember with Pop Culture Entities is some of them don’t expect to be worshipped or held in such important regard. My Kanaya, in very Kanaya fashion, seemed eager to provide me with what I needed but unsure of what way to act or how to go about the situation. But she’s a good girl so wasn’t afraid to present that and be honest.

Occasionally in the beginning I’d legitamately pray to her, asking her give me strength for the day. I lessened this thinking it important I not burden or rely on her as my Only Deity, which she wasn’t, but she’s never once let me down when I asked help or guidance.

One time early on when I was pained I very desperately asked for something, I charged two coins with my wishes before dropping them in her bowl, and promised more if my wish was granted. My wish was very much granted and a pretty much spoiled her and upgraded her shrine out of relief.

She’s still just a person though so she gets nervous and sometimes tells me “This Has Nothing To Do With Me” When I ask something. There was previously a Full Moon in Virgo, and I try to to a Troll themed spell each Full Moon. I gave her treats and wrote a speech asking for the things I needed help with. (I also wrote copies in Alternian to leave with her, because if you want extra power your gotta be extra extra like that.) After I was done I let myself softly meditate to be clear of mind enough to hear her answer to me. She told me what she could do, wasn’t able to do, and what I didn’t need to worry about. And it was all in all a very successful ritual.

We’ve a very friendly relationship. She knows I’m only human and I try to treat her such as well, only that she has favors she’s willing to do with some information and compensation. She does alot and means alot to me and I have to say I was probably very lucky to get something like this. But so if you want a checklist:

TL;DR

*Pick a character, someone important to you who represents what you want and need.

*Create a shrine to them, full of things that represent them and please them. Regularly give them offerings, I give them something whenever I ask for a favor or when the Moon is in their sign if they’re a Troll.

*Meditate to clear your mind and hear them talk to you. I’m lucky in that I can easily ‘hear’ someone talking in my heart. This usually amounts to a feeling of what they’re saying, and meditation helps make out clear words from them.

*Honor them as how greatful you are to them, but keep in mind what they’re comfortable with. My Tavros is happy with just a bracelet and being called upon in a spell. But I don’t think Vriska wants to talk to me until I can put together a setup rivaling Kanaya’s.

*Be honest with your needs, and you’ll get honest feedback and sincere help. My relationship to Terezi is quite simple. I sobbed about how bad I was, and she took immense pity on me and promised she’d do what she could. Not saying to guilt trip them, but you gotta be honest.

*Pray for strength, ask for favors, and inquire advice. In exchange be sure to provide gifts, accomodations, and do things to honor them. I made a Kanaya themed bookmark and had her bless it, so whatever book I use it in ties into her and she can enjoy it too!

Just do what you feel you need to attract their attention. Respect them and find how you can communicate clearly. If you ask for help, listen for someone willing to provide it.

~Thanks for Playing with Us!~

——–~Mod Bee

[journeysintowebcomics]

Homestuck Liveblog #171

UPDATE 171: Like Punching Your Own Face

Last time Roxy had managed to create the matriorb out of thin air, and Dave and Dirk were finally having a much-needed conversation, Dave unloading everything he had in his head regarding Bro’s way of raising him. It was raw and made me sympathize a lot with Dave, but it’s not over yet. Let’s continue.

The first thing I read in this update is Dirk apologizing. Huh. It wasn’t your fault, Dirk, Dave simply had the bad luck of being raised by a sucky version of you. Then again, as it was pointed to me: Dirk himself admitted long ago that he has no business raising anyone. He’s not wrong, if this was the result. Roxy didn’t do a stellar job, but she wasn’t a complete disaster – the ocean-sized gap that���s the lack of communication between the Lalondes was the problem. All in all, maybe not having to raise them by themselves would have helped.

DAVE: you had a completely different life full of like  DAVE: different choices and actions and stuff 

He’s not wrong about that, environment shapes people a lot. I wonder how alternate Dave would have raised Dirk if there wasn’t the slight problem of Dirk being a few centuries in the future...and also if alternate Dave hadn’t been killed. That can’t have been of help either.

Dirk continues feeling responsible of what Bro did, saying he needs to take responsibility for all the splinters that are him. It’s hard to understand, a bit. I honestly can’t even start saying how complicated it is to feel like that – but somehow I have the feeling that a lot of people in the world would feel responsible for what their alternates do. I don’t know if I would.

DIRK: I've felt...  DIRK: Haunted by them.  DIRK: And what that really means is, I'm perpetually haunted by my own bad qualities. 

You literally made glasses that are filled with some of your own bad qualities, Dirk. You kinda brought that one to yourself, just saying.

Dave appreciates Dirk’s apologies, even though it feels weird to hear it from someone that isn’t the Bro he knew, which in turn makes Dirk confess that he isn’t even happy with his relationships with his peers – especially with Jake. Well yeah, no surprise there, everything is still a fresh wound. It was just a day ago or so that Jake was telling to other people that he felt suffocated. Who knows, maybe in the future that’ll change! Don’t give up, Dirk.

It’s nice to see that Dave and Dirk are trying to give support to each other despite the trouble they have to connect. It’s clumsy, it’s distant, but they’re trying. It’s more akin to pulling teeth than a heartfelt conversation, buuuuuuut it’s the best the Striders can do.

DAVE: you dont actually seem like a bad person to me though  DIRK: No?  DAVE: nah  DIRK: Why not?  DIRK: We did just meet, after all.  DAVE: because  DAVE: i dunno if truly bad people wrestle so much with whether theyre good or bad 

Dirk is not a bad person. He can be extremely difficult to deal with, but he’s not bad. I’m sure hearing it from Dave will make it resonate more than if he had heard it from anyone else, even if everyone else would be more energetic about telling him that he’s a good person. Dirk isn’t even accepting it from Dave at face value, although he is grateful about it. Everyone else idolized him, after all.

DIRK: She meant well, but was so enamored of me, and seemingly everything I did.  DIRK: Which I think was the last thing I needed.  DIRK: To be idolized in some form by other people I respected.  DIRK: I had enough of that feeling coming from within, particularly when I was younger. 

No wonder Bro ended like that. I really don’t think anyone dared to tell him about his flaws. I suppose that maybe this could be interpreted as a sign that Bro respected Dave, but I’m not going to think that’s correct. That relationship was pretty messed up, after all.

Dave sounds genuinely floored to hear everything his alternate self did in Dirk’s universe, including killing clown presidents and somehow managing to make a million Statues of Liberty. I’m still wrapping my head around that one. Could that have been how things would have gone if the world hadn’t ended horribly? Hm...no. The movies and all were a way to give the Condesce a sucker punch, no Condesce means those concrete movies wouldn’t exist. It’s hard to say what would have happened. Maybe Dave really would have gone into the fields that study dead stuff.

Dirk tried to follow Dave’s perceived good traits. Golly, Dave must have never seen that coming.

DIRK: You get to apply all that potential you showed in one reality to something much bigger and more existentially critical.  DIRK: Whatever strength you showed in trying to save a dying planet, the fact is, I think we need that more here.  DIRK: And the trials inherent in being a part of something like this, I think they bring more out of you than a relatively pedestrian life on Earth would. Make you face more things about yourself. At least, that's been true for me. 

Oh hey, I just realized that this alternate Dave pretty much did everything that’s expected of the Dave we know: fight, resist, and pretty much be a cornerstone of the rebellion against the Condesce. He’s everything Dave doesn’t think he can be. Think about that, Dave.

DIRK: I hope it doesn't come off as overly sentimental garbage, but it seems to me like you turned out to be a really good dude.  DIRK: Like, really, a better sort of dude I ever imagined talking to when I pictured meeting the legendary guy I idolized.  DIRK: I pictured him as probably being "too cool" to be the type of guy you are.  DIRK: But you know what, fuck being too cool for that.

Congratulations, you pretty much punched Dave’s hopes from when he was thirteen years old. It’s for the better. Somehow hearing that Dave is not the “cool” person Dave had once hoped Bro would see him as catches him off-guard. Here we go! This’ll be the turning point for Dave, won’t be it? Things are going to change for him – hopefully! Dave certainly had the big character arc in Homestuck, even if he says people don’t have arcs.

And here we go!

DAVE: its really fucked up of me  DAVE: what im presently doing  DAVE: so  DAVE: sorry about that  DIRK: Oh, y-  DIRK: Yeah.  DIRK: Man.  DIRK: This is some fucked up shit alright.  DAVE: i know

This is much more than I expected. Of all things that could happen, a hug wasn’t even close to the top of the list. This is actually a pretty sweet moment, I’m glad it actually happened. Part of me was sure Hussie wouldn’t show them talking, but he did. I’m glad I was proven wrong about it.

So! There’s only one conversation left before things may kick into overdrive straight towards the last part of Homestuck! Roxy is going to meet Kanaya, surely to give her the matriorb. Things are winding down everywhere else, it won’t be long now!

Roxy appears from the skies with a ‘heeeeeey’ and repeats it a few more times, preparing the surprise by telling her to guess what she brought. I can guarantee that the matriorb is not going to be a guess here, hah!

KANAYA: Is It The Thing Behind Your Back  ROXY: yup but u gotta be more specific  KANAYA: Is It A Little Piece Of Paper That Says Hey On It  ROXY: hahahahaha no but that would be SO FUNNY! 

I won’t lie, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it hadn’t been that. Wish you had thought about it before. Maybe there’s still time to write “I.O.U one (1) matriorb” on any random rock and give it to her...or maybe that’d be cruel. Shrug.

Not wasting any more time, Roxy presents the matriorb, much to Kanaya’s astonishment. She’s so surprised she can barely express her surprise while Roxy tries to explain in vague terms. Look at that, Kanaya has tears in her eyes! It must be hard to describe, the feeling of hope in seeing the way the troll race is going to be resurrected. Keep it away from the Condesce and everything should be fine.

Nobody would have thought that the way to revive the trolls would just be given to her like this, but she can’t complain. There’s a lot of work to do, the mother larva isn’t going to raise itself. There’s a life of duty and work ahead of her.

Where’s Karkaroni, asks Roxy? “Meditating”. With his face deep into the dirt. You’re so lucky you’re telling this to someone Roxy doesn’t know very well, nobody else would believe such answer.

Roxy gets into her role of Rose’s mother and tries to know Kanaya better, asking about the meteor tri, where everybody formed small groups and only convened like twice of three times. It wasn’t the social jamboree Roxy imagined. Could have been worse, Roxy. It was worse once. At least now everyone is more or less getting along and Kanaya is aware she needs Karkaroni’s help so trolls aren’t like in Alternia.

...having doubts about fighting? Well I can understand Kanaya would want to protect the matriorb and that she believes her skills are not as good as everyone else’s, but if the Condesce isn’t defeated that matriorb will only be good as a paperweight. Roxy points all that and tries to give Kanaya encouragement about her skills. Well not many things can beat a chainsaw in power. That’s all enough to convince Kanaya to go with her and prepare for the fight.

Now that all the dialogue options are over, the point of view returns to the dream bubble where Vriska has gone to harass herself. Yeah, don’t ask me why she’s bothering to do this.

Okay, I read one page and I’m already feeling a bit sick. I don’t know how Hussie is doing this, managing to make me dislike Vriska after I spent most of her appearances liking her. In just a few hundred pages he’s managing to make me not want to read her anymore. It’s going to be difficult to write something that isn’t constant grumbling. Well, there’s one thing...

VRISKA: Remem8er when you used to care a8out that sort of thing?  VRISKA: No, o8viously not.  VRISKA: All you care a8out now is 8ullshit hipstery fashion trends, feeling "happy", and... whatever the fuck it is you're doing here?  VRISKA: Frolicking with some horses in an ugly field or some shit. VRISKA: Just a8solutely disgraceful.  VRISKA: How could I have 8ecome so selfish??  VRISKA: You do know this is selfish, right?  VRISKA: This isn't having some fucking "epiphany" or like "growing as a person" or whatever self-serving spin you might 8e putting on what's happening here.  VRISKA: It's just plain narcissism, the worst kind you're capa8le of. A total renunci8tion of any responsi8ility for contri8uting to the gr8ter good.  VRISKA: And it makes me FUCKING SICK. 

...I have no words. Yeah, looking for personal happiness is selfish, but there’s nothing wrong with being reasonably selfish. I just...I can’t say anything about this that isn’t some sort of circular argument that in the end isn’t worth typing here. I just can’t say anything.

VRISKA: Contrary to your lazy fakey "happy" shit, I've ACTUALLY GROWN AS A PERSON.  VRISKA: What do you think of THAT, you frivolous, dithering 8ITCH???????? 

Like hell you did!

Just...agh.

Looks like the dead Vriska wasn’t wrong, the horses really is a bad omen for her. Meenah is leaving her and going with the Vriska that is alive. At least Meenah has the decency to be conflicted about what she’s feeling and all, but damn, what a way to punch someone that’s already down, Hussie.

Meenah likes dead Vriska a lot, and she admits it, but she’s bored of having an idyllic life with dead Vriska. She wants to fight Lord English and here’s the chance to do it. Dead Vriska may have changed, but Meenah is the same than before, and that one isn’t content with sitting on the sidelines. That’s why she’s leaving – more or less.

I feel bad for dead Vriska. It’s almost hard to believe that the end for the character I knew for so long is this – or at least this seems like the end. It feels...weird. I feel really bad for her. I wish this hadn’t gone for this. Heck, Meenah deciding to go fight Lord English would have been understandable. I just wish this whole thing hadn’t needed to happen.

Hm. I think I should be stopping here for now.

Next update: next time

[blindrapture]

After the break, the remainder of this post will be Andrew Hussie’s newspost from 11/08/14. In it, he goes pretty in-depth about the symbolism and intent of Homestuck’s GAME OVER flash. I wanted to share this because it’s one of the most concise examples I can think of that stresses why I still think he’s goddamn lovely. It also contains his own rather clear declaration that he prefers Death Of The Author over Word Of God (”Now, since they can no longer depend on answers which I supply between horse jokes and snappy retorts, they are lost in the woods to fend for themselves against the wolves of dubious fanalysis.“), a sentiment which echoes darkly through the fandom these days. You could argue he pretty much spends most of the newspost trying to explain how to read the ending to come. And plus I can say this is a #ThrowbackFrihorse thing, even though it’s nowhere near Friday.

Spoilers ahead, those of you who have not yet finished reading Homestuck.

Andrew: There comes a time in every young Homestuck's life when they must face the fact that a notable comic author has swindled them into getting on a bus labeled "cool updates", only to swerve said bus off the highway and into a precipitous gulch of unmitigated sadstuck. But the old wives tale says that sadstuck was just a thing that happened in our fanfics, the bus children wailed. That's what they said about the tricksters too, a veteran child in the back replied. They said the tricksters would never see the light of canon, but where are the doubters now? Where are they now. Propping up six feet of dirt is where. The veteran child is weirding everybody out, so they stop looking at him, and turn to the driver. But the driver is now a spooky skeleton and the kids lose their shit. The skeleton head does a creepy 180, and speaks his scary curse. Heed me bus youths, for I am the ghost of future sadstuck. I have traveled back in time and am on a bus for some reason I guess, to punish you for your maudlin fics. For every time you murmured sadstuck while having a feeling, for every fic you pastebinned by candlelight, my curse has grown stronger, and my legend, dumber. Then the skeleton ran out of stuff to say, and looking a little embarrassed, turned around again to keep driving. Then he screamed once he remembered the bus was falling. Thanks for listening to my short story. We like to have a good time here at MS Paint Adventures, The Website. The gigaplay is off to a rocky start of unhewn feels. If your kerchief has become too soggy with tears from emotion, skeleton terror, or just plain admiration for my skill as a short story writer (can't blame you there), and you wish to lighten the mood, I recommend moseying over to Paradox Space, which is currently running a 24 page comic I have written about Crowbar. I am alert to the desires of readers every single day, and the one thing I hear them clamor for above all else, is more stories about CROWBAR. We want more content about Crowbar, RIGHT NOW, they say, and make that content consist of 24 beautifully illustrated comic pages, MINIMUM. I just give the people what they want. Fortunately, Homestuck's Premier Felt Fan #1 Jones was available to do a spectacular job of illustrating this comic. My rambling noir-style monologues have never before overlapped such lovely artwork. GOD TIER TALK! I don't answer Q's about Homestuck much anymore. It was a practice which I think used to be some people's lifeline for decoding the enigmatic runes of this story. Now, since they can no longer depend on answers which I supply between horse jokes and snappy retorts, they are lost in the woods to fend for themselves against the wolves of dubious fanalysis. Pulling the ripcord on the Homestuck machine again, combined with recent story events, makes me think something FAQQY may be in order. The thing is, when you make a big story, and allude to rules for a complicated system dictating mortality, people tend to REALLY, REALLY want to understand how it works. Speculation naturally fills the vacuum in lieu of concrete data. Theories are crafted. Headcanons, congealed. Then, when additional data is presented (DEAD KIDS), which happen to chafe with fanon constructs, feelings run ragged, and Bullshit is called. Then Bullshit shows up, and says, you rang? And the fanonistas say, yes Bullshit. Look at this mess. LOOK at it. This in NO WAY jives with my views on what constitutes heroism and justice. Bullshit nods sagely while lighting its pipe. Earlier in HS when god tier folk were more scarce, the story was more cagey about these verdicts. The Vriska ruling was presented as a close call, which maybe could have gone either way. Then Slick smacked the clock to Just before it could settle, leaving the true verdict ambiguous, and the 'moral debate' intact, so to speak. But now that there are a lot of god tiers running around, with the stakes raised and the body count piling up, the game (or, story) is starting to be more liberal with its rulings. As in, more likely to come down hard on Just, Heroic, or Neither verdicts without intervention or obfuscation, helping us better understand the boundaries of heroic and just action through example. Not necessarily by moral definitions, but as dictated by the rules of a game. So that turns the story guy (sometimes known as an "author") into something like a ref at a basketball game. He blows the whistle when he sees the basketball guy (the "baller") take a half step without bouncing the ball. The home team crowd does not detect the subtle violation and goes boooooo! Those homers can boo all they want, but you know, the guy is really just some bozo with a whistle. The rules are the rules! There's reason to think there is a nuanced scale ranging from Heroic to Just inside the clock. There may be many shades of justice and heroism, some forms just barely qualifying to seal one's fate. But there's nothing nuanced about Alive vs. Dead. The result of a coin flip is absolute, even though there may be many subtle factors contributing to which side it lands on. Such as whether the coin is pure of heart, and whether the table it lands on has ever killed a man. You get a sense for the nuance of the judgment when it comes to these "close calls", like with Vriska, or more recently, with Jade. In her case, she was subject to mind control when she racked up her misdeeds, which ordinarily would probably exempt her. But it wasn't ordinary mind control. More like flipping an "evil switch", removing her ethical filter, thereby letting he personality come through, and giving her license to act on impulses which she'd ordinarily suppress. So this gives the clock something to work with. Still, her behavior is compromised, so it's by no means a slam dunk. (BASKET BALL! that is still the metaphor.) So it's very close, and perhaps the clock even spares her... except for Aranea, whose luck lets close calls break in her favor, and nudges that needle one hair to the Just side. Very unlikely that happens if it's not close already though. Jane's situation is basically the same, and so is her verdict. How about Jake? He's the only player who's had two rulings. The first time, he was blustering Ronald Reagan quotes at the top of his lungs when Jane forked him, which I think we may agree safely disqualifies him from heroism (though the Republican party may disagree). The second time was ruled Heroic, when he took a realmaginary ninja sword through the chest for a friend. This corresponds pretty closely with most people's definition of heroic, so I doubt anyone would consider this one controversial either. Dave? Probably not much to debate here either. Fighting while attempting to save a dead friend, to bring her back to Jane for resurrection. There's a moral element here, tied to common ideas of heroism, so there's not much in dispute. When factors stray somewhat from moral notions of heroism, that's when there is more fuel for debate. So what about Rose? Wasn't John killed by Jack under similar circumstances to how Rose died? So why did he survive, and Rose didn't? The circumstances were very similar, on the surface. But I would suggest that the similarity of the two situations, both leading to different outcomes, helps clarify the rules in play, not confuse them. The reason for this? SCIENCE. If you were a scientist in this fictional world, trying to test this fictional construct, these are the exact kinds of situations you would seek out to prove or disprove whatever hypothesis you had. Situations that are very similar, with most factors isolated, and varying only in minor and controlled ways. That's how you would start to understand where the line is between heroic and non-heroic conduct. So what varies between the situations? What line does Rose cross which John doesn't? It becomes pretty obvious if you break the two scenes down. John was standing there, poised for battle with Jack, for all of two seconds before Jack auto-stabbed him from behind. Not even to speak of the underhanded tactic by the villain, I think what's more important is John didn't even get a chance to move. Or specifically, to prove through action that he was prepared to do battle with a foe. In fact, hindsight may tell us he wasn't. He hadn't been through much then. But years later, when he reenacted that scene with Jack through a dream bubble, he was ready that time. He had years to think about that moment, to reflect on the damage caused by Jack, and what he might have done differently if he'd been more prepared, and if the battle wasn't cut short. But during the first encounter, there was no time for heroic intent to translate into action. Compare with Rose's situation. Her feelings are unambiguous. Her mind is made up, and committed to action in the form of forward motion. Sorry Rose, you took a few too many steps through the paint on your drive to the hoop. Gotta blow the whistle! The two similar situations illustrate where one of the lines are for heroism (as a game rule, not moralistically), and in this case, that line is action. It would seem it's not good enough just to have heroic intentions or bold feelings. It doesn't cut it to strike a pose and look cool for two seconds. The intent should be expressed through commitment to an action. The action is what proves the intent. For all we know, John wasn't ready to back up his posture. For all we know, he was terrified! Rose wasn't though. Her action proved it. Why does Rose lashing out in vengeance count as heroic? If you wanted my personal opinion on heroism, I would say a vengeful act is not heroic by itself. We all have our ideas on what heroism means. But I think this is the wrong question to ask. The concern here is less about the moral definition of a heroic act, and more about how heroism is defined in terms of a series of rules which a game system can enforce. Based on some evidence we have, and some things Doc once said about god tier immortality, it's pretty safe to make at least one generalization about heroism as a game construct. The game/story regards your behavior as Heroic if you make some effort to defeat or kill someone who is villainous (or in other words, someone worthy of a Just death). The state of the hero's mind is just an additional consideration, such as whether they happen to be motivated by anger or vengeance. But let's imagine for a moment that a vengeful act is automatically unworthy of heroism, even if directed against a great evil. Wouldn't this be a MAJOR loophole for god tiers to avoid dying heroic deaths? It would mean to qualify as a hero, you couldn't feel anger toward a villain who has almost certainly done something to provoke anger. If a hero ever experienced loss at the hands of a villain, their natural emotional state would exempt them from the heroic consequence of the actions resulting from that anger. They would be completely invulnerable to a villain, so long as they maintained a grudge! The thing with villains is, they tend to have a way of inflicting loss on others. If being wronged precluded heroic behavior, villains would suddenly discover heroes to be incredibly rare commodities. There's a lot to think about here. It's a combination of how you want to morally define heroism and justice, and how to pragmatically construct enforceable rules to that effect. The latter is something that can get very technical, and boil down to hairline actions such as whether one exhibits clear enough forward motion or such, roughly the way sports are officiated. There's no way I'll ever come up with a full list of rules, or even get much deeper into the rules than I have here. But I believe this is a rational outline for the way the subject may be examined, if you wish to do so!!!

[auideas]

Ask the Admins 9.0

anon asked: So was AtA skipped on purpose or accident?

HA (by accident but don’t tell anyone).

anon asked: Is ask the admins replacing the quotes for today?

We will be doing all the things today - hold tight for some quotes later!

anon asked: Before I forget, are you going to change the MASTERLIST OF TAGS to have the assistant admins on there too (since you have yourselves and the previous admins)?

Yup! We’re still in the process of updating the blog to accommodate for the additional admins. We’re hoping to be finished in the next week or so.

anon asked: Don't watch "A Dog's Purpose"!! Unless you're okay with a terrified dog being forced/pushed into rushing water just to film a scene when a CGI would have sufficed.

Chamomile: eyerooooooll

M: God dangit.

Syren: Yooo I saw that video! I actually discussed it in a round at my last speech meet. It's sick, they won't be getting my support.

Jynn: See: Admin Chamomiles response. In any case I am too Tired(TM) to get into all that and too broke to see any movie in theaters anyways.

Vox: Man, I know I trusted Rotten Tomatoes for a reason.

anon asked: I recently started a fandom specific prompt blog and I have no idea how to get it out there?? I'm tagging all the posts but I don't think anyone's seen them. XD what do I do? Thanks in advance!

Chamomile: okay so what you need to do is get a really popular post to blow up, then let people find the blog. It takes a lot of grinding and luck, but don’t give up!

M: Yup that happened with us here; we had a couple posts that got wildly popular, and people have been finding the blog ever since (namely that one Never Book quote everyone loves so much). Some advice I’d give is to be consistent, be involved in the writing community, and don’t give up - this stuff takes a chunk out of your life, but we love helping you all out!

anon asked: WOULD YOU RATHER: get paid a penny to talk about what you're thinking of, or pay two pennies to say your opinions? -- penny for your thoughts vs put my two cents in

Chamomile: I’ll take the single penny.

M: I’ll be the person who listens to two people then gives those people their pennies back so I can tell them what I think of their thoughts. Poor man’s capitalism.

Syren: I'd probs just say what I want to say, no money involved. Unless they needed it.

Jynn: One cent, I need the cash.

Vox: As a business major I need to say penny for your thoughts. (As resident busybody and IRL mom friend….)

anon asked: Which would you (admins and assistants) rather be? A king/queen, lord/lady, duke/duchess, emperor/empress, or pharaoh?             

Chamomile: I answered this in another ask and said I wanted to be a Queen but...make me a Lord instead.

M: I’d be good with anything, but I feel like being the legitimate King would be far too much pressure - I’m going to go with Prince, Duke, or Lord.

Syren: Make me an empress, I'll be the coolest one since Kuzco.

Jynn: Hmmm whichever one has the lowest responsibility to money ratio. I have zero experience doing any of those things but I like being rich.

Vox: I’d say pharaoh, but like... old timey era sort of pharaoh. 10/10 would gladly deal with Egyptian heat to lazily lounge around while half-naked people cater to my whims.

anon asked: PlayStation or XBox?

Chamomile: XBOX

M: I gotta say Playstation only because I grew up with a Playstation 2, not an Xbox :b

Syren: Xbox, cause I've never played a PS woops

Jynn: I don’t play video games but I wouldn’t pass up a good ol PS2.

Vox: PS all the way.

anon asked: reason(s) for chosen usenames? (e.g. is it your favorite type of tea? is it your favorite letter?)

Chamomile: It’s a super cryptic homestuck reference that literally 0.2% of the fans would recognize.

M: Lol my name is Em y’all

Syren: My real name is Camryn, and I think Syren sounds like Siren- one of my favorite mythical creatures

Jynn: It’s part of my regular screen name which is JynniSlorg. A mishmash of stuff I can’t even remember but that must have made some semblance of sense back when I was 14.

Vox:  It’s when you typerventilate but with a latin twist. Even though ‘vox’ technically means voice. Typervoxilations sounds a lot cooler than typerecfuntilations. (Especially when you’re immature and read things quickly like me and typerecfuntilations starts to look like ‘erectile dysfunction’).

anon asked: Do yo know where this is from: "Rabbits die of loneliness, you know!" [This quotes means a lot to me]

Chamomile: No idea, but I have an unknown quote too! “Rain on a sunny day means a fox’s wedding”.

M: It reminds me of the Velveteen Rabbit, but I’m not really sure!

Syren: My first guess would be ‘Of Mice and Men’ by Steinbeck, but I don't think that's how the quote in that book goes…

Jynn: No but it’s probably either classic literature or anime.

Vox: When I see ‘rabbits’ I automatically think Zootopia, but I’ve never seen so I have no clue!

anon asked: Hey, if we start trying to ship the aa with the admins, can we call M and Vox "Pixilation"?

M: Pftttt for sure - the more ships, the merrier!

Vox: (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧ WHAT A CUTE SHIP NAME, I’M HONORED FRIEND.

anon asked: Without looking it up, do you know what this is from?: "I'm a bad dream. I'm a rad scene. I'm a tad mean. But I'm not afraid to take you out."       

Chamomile: Is this a Franz Ferdinanz song?

M: Eyyyyyy that’s RWBY - found it on YouTube a while ago and I was pleasantly surprised

Syren: No clue. And I think Chamomile’s thinking of the song ‘Take *Me* Out’ ;)

Jynn: RWBY right? I’m p sure it’s a Jeff Williams song.

Vox: Nope! (❁´◡`❁)

anon asked: Have you ever written a character with a physical disability? If yes, what was the hardest thing about writing the character?            

Chamomile: Yep! Prosthetics, wheelchairs, and canes on multiple occasions. Hearing aids a handful of times, and a whole lot of glasses. I guess the hardest thing is just adjusting to a new character’s quirks? Changing how a character gestures and responds to other characters.

M: Yes I have, and it was difficult to do, but I wrote about someone I know who has cerebral palsy, and because I know them so well, I understand their daily struggle and can write about it fairly well. I think the most difficult part was acknowledging that I don’t really know everything about the disability and had to do a lot of research before taking it from their point of view.

Syren: I'm actually writing a character right now that has Chiari Malformation and Syringomyelia, cause I have them and never hear about anyone else having them (even though they're kinda common), so I thought it'd be interesting! Hardest thing is probably fitting my symptoms into another person.

Jynn: Yep! I don’t know if I’d say hardest but I always try to do a lot of research into how certain things will affect the small everyday parts of life. My brother and his friends have really helped me become better at that since they’re most all amputees and I have quite a few amputee characters. It’s just v important to look at real life people to see the details people could miss about how certain things affect people's lives.

Vox: Of course! I wrote for Bucky Barnes once, and to be fair, the work was more focused on the mental more than the physical, but there was a fair amount of how much of what Hydra did to him (especially the metal bits), and I had a character once who was completely blind. The hardest part of writing it was the fact that I’ve never been in the shoes of either but I have to find a way to, especially with the kind of writing I do.

anon asked: Do you have any AU’s that you’ve always wanted to post but never have?

Chamomile: Sooooo many. I wanted to do an AU where Character A is an immortal who has to “trade” a part of themself every time they come back to life (ex: in one regeneration they don’t have their right arm, in another regeneration they have both arms but no voice, etc.)

M: I have a lot of 3 a.m. AU’s that never actually make it into the drafts and just sit in my notes for a while - one of the more infamous ones that has been in the drafts for months now is the truffle mushroom one. I’ll say no more.

Syren: I haven't given up on any of my au ideas yet, but I've definitely got quite the list of one's to write.

Jynn: Hmmm I don’t have any in mind that I don’t plan to post in the future.

Vox: See: AA C-Ryn. Every now and then I go back to tweak em but eventually, they’ll be beautiful potatoes I can dig out of my google docs and present to the world.